iJust Want to Go to the Dance?
by Falling Further
Summary: Through the divine intervention of Carly, Sam and Freddie decide to go to a school dance together. Follow the pair as they fumble through the process of discovering their feelings for each other. Freddie x Sam. Freshly edited with a bonus chapter.
1. iWould Do Anything For Carly

Chapter 1: iWould Do Anything For Carly

Disclaimer: I do not own iCarly. This fan fic was written as a mode of catharsis with no hope of profit.

Author's Note: Edited version with bonus chapter! See Author's Notes at the end for changes.

* * *

The bedroom would be classified as boring by most people. The only pieces of furniture in the room were a queen sized bed that lay pushed against one wall and a solid black, ergonomic desk which sat directly across from the bed. As a whole, the room gave off the impression of being clean; far too clean to belong to a young male teenager. No objects littered the floor, and the bed was made in a style that a drill sergeant would find pleasing. The only thing distinguishing the room from a jail cell was the gargantuan computer which dwarfed the desk it was situated on top of. Sitting calmly in front of the computer, Freddie scanned the computer screen with slightly reddened eyes. 

Hours had the annoying tendency to fly by when he was in his current position. That was why he was unsurprised when he peeked up at the alarm clock that stood on the desk and found that it was already two o'clock in the morning. He had been awoken from his computer driven trance by his mother's worried knock on his locked bedroom door. 

"I'll go to sleep soon, Mom," assured Freddie curtly before turning his attention back to the screen. He had promised Carly that he would resolve the website's forum's gallery issue by the next time he saw her. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how he was thinking about it at the time, that next meeting was due in a handful of hours.

As his eyes refocused on the seemingly unending lines of code, his mind wandered on to the subject of why he was willing to do so much for Carly Shea. The logic puzzle solved itself with the following thought: She had been the first girl to accept him into her life. Before Carly had befriended him, he had been perfectly content in his sheltered bubble; enveloped by his suffocating mother and reaching out to the outside world solely through the use of his computer. Carly had pulled him out of his room and showed him that there were worthwhile things outside. For that, he was grateful enough to miss out on a night of sleep.

His resolve reaffirmed, the boy slapped himself on the face with both of his palms lightly before returning to his task. He still had a long way to go.

* * *

The students moved down the halls in a thick, solid throng. Off to the side, pressed against a set of light blue lockers, Sam stood with her hands on her hips waiting for Germy to spit out whatever he was going to ask between sneezes. 

"Sam," sneeze, "do you," sneeze, sneeze, "want to go," sneeze, "to the dance …"

During the last sneeze break, Sam held up her right hand to stop the interrupted sentence. In as soft and honey-like a voice she could muster, she exclaimed, "Why of course I want to go to the dance!"

Jeremy's cherub-like face displayed equal parts of joy and utter shock. Like a pinch to make sure that he wasn't dreaming, he asked breathlessly, "With me?"

Unfortunately for Germy, the pinch proved to be more than effective. Sam's normal, brash voice shouted, "Of course not!" Suddenly, the boy found himself to be the victim of one of Sam's superhuman shoves. He would have screamed in terror as he sailed through the air, but his itching, insistent nose forced him to settle for a horrified sneeze.

After wiping her hands on her Capri jeans thoroughly, Sam wheeled around and found herself standing face to face with Carly. Replacing her satisfied grin with a cautious look, Sam asked tentatively, "How long have you been standing there?"

Carly took a moment to clear her throat before holding her hands together in front of her body, pouting slightly, and mimicking in a sugary sweet voice, "Of course I want to go to the dance!" Her voice dropped back to its normal tone as she verbally prodded, "So, Sam wants to go to the dance?"

Sam could feel her face reddening slightly. Looking away from her friend, she quickly spat out, "That was just part of the setup for the toss."

"Oh, I see," agreed Carly unconvincingly.

"I know that tone," stated Sam flatly. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she continued, "I don't like that tone."

"But you like to dance, huh?" said Carly playfully.

Sam understood instinctively that she was up against a wall. Carly was the meddling type, so if she let her best friend keep the idea in her head sooner or later it would come back to haunt her. She needed a quick way to take Carly's mind off of it. 

After a few intense moments of wracking her brain, an inexcusable act considering she was in school at the time, Sam was saved from her situation by a knight in dorky armor. Raising her right hand in greeting towards the approaching Freddie, she called, "What's up, dork?"

"Nothing much, beast," answered Freddie warily. Sam was being unusually civil, greeting him before insulting him.

Sam's finger pointed to a spot above and behind the boy as she said, "No seriously, I mean what's that up there?"

Before Carly could warn him, he was looking over his left shoulder, helpless before the blond whirlwind. Freddie's viewpoint shifted from his standing height to the floor before he knew what hit him.

As Carly moved to help Freddie up, Sam disappeared into the crowd of students. Once Freddie had been brought back up to his feet, Carly smiled, "You haven't fallen for that one in a while."

"Yeah, sorry," muttered Freddie, his embarrassment at falling for one of the oldest tricks in Sam's book portrayed by a reddening of his cheeks. To shake off the feeling, he explained, "I had a late night, so I don't think my wits are awake yet."

Carly looked at her friend's face critically before stating, "Yeah, you do look kind of tired."

"At least the gallery is fixed," stated Freddie optimistically as he looked down at his clothing and began dusting himself off.

"You weren't up all night fixing the website, were you?" asked Carly, her voice picking up a touch of worry.

His eyes quickly scanned the girl's face for signs of worry or scorn. Upon finding nothing there, he defensively asked, "Maybe?" 

The face in question suddenly displayed signs of both of the emotions he had been looking for as she chastised, "You shouldn't stay up all night doing things like that!"

A smirk on his face, Freddie announced with a wide flourish of his arms, "The website must stay up! Your fans demand it!"

"If my choice is between having you healthy or having a few impatient fans angry, I would choose you any day, Freddie," said Carly seriously.

Feeling his ears blush slightly, Freddie assured her, "I won't do it again." He took in the brightness of his friend's smile for a few moments before asking, "So what's wrong with Sam? She usually doesn't physically assault me before insulting me a few times first."

"Yeah, it's like a cat playing with a mouse it's about to eat," muttered Carly absentmindedly as she turned thoughts over in her head. Sam had obviously dropped Freddie as a diversion. Maybe she really did want to go to the dance.

Freddie brought her out of her thoughts by waving his right hand in front of her face and asking, "Carly, are you ok? You look kind of distracted."

As her eyes focused back on her friend, her mind quietly pieced together an idea. Leaning forward suddenly, Carly asked Freddie, "Hey, are you going to that dance on Thursday?"

The blush spread from the boy's ears to the rest of his face. His mind racing, he eventually stammered out the words, "Well, I wasn't planning to." Catching himself he quickly added, "But I would go if I had someone to go with."

"That's great!" exclaimed Carly. Freddie's face stretched underneath the pressure of a gigantic grin. It stayed that way until Carly finished, "You can ask Sam then!"

All semblances of the grin and the blush disappeared from his face, replaced by a cold mixture of panic and fear. His voice devoid of all emotion, he asked, "Say what now?"

Carly's voice picking up as much speed and brightness as it could, she conjectured, "Well I figured since both you and Sam want to go to the dance but don't have anyone to go with, you could go together."

"That logic is so messed up," complained Freddie. After taking a moment to think with the palm of his right hand pressed against his forehead, he burst out, "It would be like setting up Spencer and Ms. Briggs because they both aren't married!"

Carly adopted a thinking pose of her own, her right hand straying up to and mindlessly scratching the top of her head as she pondered out loud, "Do you really think that those two will go well together?"

"Of course not!" shouted Freddie, jumping up and down to emphasize his point. His eyes narrowed incredulously at the girl. "What makes you think Sam and I will go well together?"

Carly shrugged her shoulders as she answered, "Well you guys spend a lot of time together."

"That's because of you!" exclaimed the teenage boy. Shaking his head, he took a pause to slow down the conversation. Both Carly and Sam had a clear advantage over him in rapid-fire verbal debates. "Carly, I only said what I said because I thought that you were going to ask me out to the dance."

"Freddie," said Carly, also taking a pause to hopefully let her friend down easily, "I already have a date."

Judging from how quickly Freddie's expression hit rock bottom, Carly's plan had failed miserably. The boy's eyes had locked themselves onto the handle of a nearby locker door and a steady stream of mumbled words the quality of, "Oh," flowed from his lips.

Seeing that Freddie needed a pick-me-up, Carly placed her right hand on his left shoulder and assured him, "Look, you know I can't have fun doing something unless you and Sam are with me."

Freddie perked up slightly at that, but a doubtful expression lingered on his face. "What makes you think I'm going to survive an evening with her?" he asked, lending voice to his thoughts. "She just put me on the ground for saying hello!"

"You'll get through it," said Carly confidently. After sending a smile at the boy, she stated, "You're a lot tougher than people think you are."

"Thanks for noticing," said Freddie, taking the opportunity to flex his muscles in a few bodybuilding poses. Once he had finished the poses, the nagging thoughts resurfaced however. "You know, she's just going to beat me up if I ask her."

Sensing she was winning the battle, Carly decided to pull out all of the stops. Using the same sweet pose and voice she had used earlier with Sam, she asked, "Please? You'll do this as a personal favor for me, won't you?"

* * *

Helpless before Carly's pose, Freddie found himself moving quickly down the hall in search of Sam. A stone's throw away from where he had been talking to Carly, he noticed Germy was knocked out on the ground and being tended to by the school nurse. Normally he would stop to worry over his friend, but he found he just didn't have the time. He had to ask Sam to the dance before he had the time to think about it twice. He would find out how Germy had ended up incapacitated later. 

Carly watched him walk away with a knowing smile on her face. Normally she didn't have the stomach to manipulate her friends, but these two needed a proper shove or nothing was ever going to happen.


	2. iAm a Girl After All

Chapter 2: iAm a Girl After All

* * *

After putting half a school's length between herself and Carly, Sam finally removed herself from the crowd of students. She found herself in the art section of the building, a wing she frequented for both its spacious, stealth enabling rooms and its notoriously lax teachers. Finding a desk that was placed outside of its native classroom, Sam decided to take a seat on top of it to catch her breath and ponder her current situation. 

At the moment, Carly should be tending to Freddie, and Freddie, like most boys in their age range, should be drooling over Carly. If things went well, Carly would forget about all of the dance business as she worried over her pet. Unfortunately for the boy, Freddie was but one of Carly's many pets. It was actually unfair how easily Carly attracted them. They all seemed to flock to her like moths to a flame.

Once Sam had examined her surroundings, she noticed a glossy black sign posted on the wall behind her. By standing up and peering at the poster from various angles she was eventually able to make out her own reflection. Cautiously her hands shot up to her face, tracing various features and confirming them as her own. After she was finished with her facial inventory, she stared blankly at the image.

She wasn't an ugly person. She was confident that she was cute by most standards, and at least close to Carly's level. Maybe it was her clothing choice. Guys might like to go after girls who wore girly clothes. That made sense in a stupid, guy logic kind of way. It definitely couldn't be her personality. Things just weren't adding up correctly. Why was Germy the only guy to ask her out to the dance?

As Sam moved away from her reflection, she noticed with a start that the sign she had been viewing herself in had been a poster for the school dance in question. Squinting, she read all of the details for the first time. It was on Thursday, it started at seven o'clock, and it took place in the gym. It was an ordinary school dance, something she had never been to before, but something she surprisingly found that she wanted to attend.

Initially she found herself repulsed by that thought, but the more she tried to fight it off, the more she came to recognize it as her true feelings. Her mind wandered into a sudden daydream of dancing with a faceless guy under the lights. She just wanted to experience it once. That rush of flowing to the music in harmony with a cute guy. She had heard Carly tell her about it multiple times, and she had secretly acknowledged that it sounded fun. Outwardly, her tomboyish persona only allowed her to stare at Carly in apprehension, but Sam considered herself a complicated girl. Just like Shrek, she had layers, and her insides weren't always reflected on her outsides. So what if she was a tomboy? Underneath the rough exterior, wasn't she a girl?

Sam answered this particular rhetorical question by again looking at her reflection in the sign. She continued this solemn vigil until a passing student bumped into her, forcing her back into tomboy mode. "Hey, buddy! Watch where you're going!" she snarled viciously.

The bumper, a junior at least judging from his height and cocky expression, gave her a smirk before turning around and continuing on his merry way. He had definitely picked the wrong time to bump into the girl: her feelings of frustration bubbled up to the surface and pointed towards the artist's back as a possible source of release. Sam sized him up quickly as he walked away from her. His clothing was completely black and baggy, and his shoulder length hung loosely down to his shoulders. The way his clothing fell loosely around his shoulders suggested he had a slender build, and judging from where he was positioned, he was obviously going to some kind of artistic class. 

It was obvious that the kid was probably doing his best day in and day out to emulate the lifestyle of a pained artist. One thing that a lot of people didn't know about Sam was that she was naturally a giver. It was time to help him achieve his goal by giving him some actual pain.

He was able to continue about three steps before she leapt onto his back and forcefully brought him down to the ground.

* * *

It was common knowledge among Sam's friends that her favorite slacking spot was the art wing, so when faced with the task of tracking her down that was Freddie's first stop. As he was rounding the corner into the wing, he noticed her staring at one of the dance posters. Immediately, he felt the knot in the pit of his stomach that occurred whenever he was sure he was about to be rejected. Feeling nauseous he decided to retreat back to the corner, observing Sam and regaining strength for the proposal. 

Sam had continued to look at the poster for what seemed like forever, as though she were memorizing every detail of the glossy cardboard. It seemed like she really did want to go to the event. Perhaps she wouldn't practice some wrestling moves on him for asking her out to the dance.

Just when Freddie had convinced himself that he was going to survive through the ordeal, the artsy junior had collided with the thought ridden Sam. The collision was like receiving a psychic premonition of a disaster. He knew he should run out to stop it, but he was immobilized by a powerful urge to sit and watch it play out. It unraveled like a car crash in slow motion: first the yelp from Sam, then the smirk from the victim-to-be, and finally the tackle that sent them both crashing to the ground.

The loud thud that resounded when the pair hit the ground awoke Freddie from his trance. Before he knew what he was doing, he was running towards the entangled teens and prying Sam off of the startled boy. Once he had managed to hold Sam back, the victim stood up and spat out, "What's her problem, man?"

Struggling for breath as he held onto Sam with every ounce of his strength, he somehow managed to belt out, "Run! She's savage and she wants your blood!"

The artist took a good look at the girl's face. What he saw leant truth to the boy's words (In artist terms it was like looking into Goya's "Saturn Devouring His Sons"), and so without another word he took off running as fast as he could in over-sized, black cargo pants.

"Coward!" shouted Sam roughly at the top of her lungs. "Come back and fight me like a man!"

Freddie could tell from the violence of Sam's jerks that she was out for blood. He needed to divert that blood lust away from the hapless bystander and towards himself. He was after all used to Sam's physical punishment, and he wouldn't turn her into the vice principal for bullying. He decided to go with an old standby, saying calmly, "Hey, Sam, you don't want to fight him like a man. You're a girl, remember?"

Instead of the violent backwards flail, coupled with a takedown, a straddle, and a nuclear wedgie that he was expecting, Sam suddenly went limp in his arms. Afraid that this was some new method of breaking free of his hold and putting a beat down on him, Freddie tightened his hold on the girl until he heard her mumble in an embarrassed voice, "I guess I am a girl."

Freddie let go of Sam then, turning her around by rotating her shoulders with his hands to get a good look at her face. Instead of the enraged facial expressions he had expected to find, Sam's face looked pensive, quiet, and even submissive. These were all emotions Freddie never expected to see from the girl. After giving her a small shake, he wondered out loud, "Sam, are you ok?"

Freddie's words seemed to bring Sam back from her paralyzing thoughts. An indignant expression took over her face, and her voice soon bought into the scornful suit, aggressively asking, "How far does it look like I've fallen if I'm worrying the bottom of the barrel?"

Sensing the attack coming, Freddie verbally and physically backpedaled. As he backed away slowly, he stated with innocently raised hands, "You just looked a little out of your element there for a second."

Sam had to fight hard to keep a smile from bubbling up to her face's surface. For some reason, scaring Freddie always made her happy. Stepping forward to match Freddie's backward pace, Sam leisurely asked, "And what exactly is my element?"

"Oh, you know," stalled Freddie, his mind racing and his hands taking on a more defensive posture. After searching his brain for non-offensive ways to describe Sam, the only thing that popped into his mind was, "Strong, independent woman?" Sam seemed to stop her forward march at that, allowing Freddie to also stop his backwards momentum. It was funny that even though he had only moved a few steps he found his heart beating rather heavily. Sam must have scared him more subconsciously than he thought she did.

Sam crossed her arms against her chest, squinting at the boy as though pondering his fate. Freddie had the good grace to blush and look away as the girl eyed him like a dog eyes a chew toy. Minutes passed before she turned around and indicated with a curling of her finger that he should follow her. Unsure where she was leading him but feeling increasingly like he was being led to a guillotine, Freddie searched around the area and made sure to wave at any person that he saw. If Sam was going to stuff him in an abandoned closet, at least they would be able to find him before he starved to death.

The pair stopped at a room close to the end of the hall. It appeared abandoned from Freddie's viewpoint, the window on the door showing that the room was filled to capacity with boxes and other large objects. Just as he was about to ask Sam what they were doing there, Sam removed some kind of kit from her jeans. With lightning precision she removed two objects from the kit and began to work on the door. After seconds of worrying at the lock, a loud click emanated from the door handle. "This can't be legal," said Freddie nervously as Sam went to open the door.

The girl turned towards him then, a wolfish grin lighting up her face as she answered, "Of course it isn't." She then turned towards the door, opened it quickly and stepped into the room.

Freddie stood outside the door as the girl disappeared inside. Nervously he peered up and down the hallway, looking to see if anyone would see him performing this act of trespass. Once he had finally decided not to risk it, Sam opened up the door, raised her right eyebrow at the boy provocatively and asked, "Are you coming or not?" Sighing heavily, the boy caved into the girl's taunting pressure and entered the room.

His first impression of the room from the inside agreed with what he had seen through the door's small window. The boxes were stacked close to the ceiling, and the smell of dust and cardboard lingered offensively in the air, begging him to sneeze. The large objects he had noticed were various art projects that either the teachers had decided to keep or students had decided to forget about. As he scanned the nearby works of art, he called out to Sam, "What is this, some kind of storage room?" Just then he noticed a tag that read, "Figures at War/Love by Spencer Shea".

"It was the architectural drafting room until budget cuts a few years back," answered Sam easily. Noticing that the boy had stalled up crouching over a sculpture of two paint splattered figures, the girl sighed heavily, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, and yanked him backwards. As Freddie struggled to maintain his balance, Sam pulled him further into the room as she continued, "The teacher and the computers were cannibalized by other departments, and the room became a glorified closet."

His balance regained, Freddie fended off Sam's grip on his collar with a flurry of weak slaps at her hand. Following her through the maze of boxes on his own terms, he thoughtfully said, "You seem to know an awful lot about this room."

Sam turned towards Freddie, flashing him a conspiratorial grin as she answered, "It's good to know the background history of your hideout."

"Your what?" asked the confused teenager. Sam moved out of his view in response to his question, forcing Freddie to take back his question with an informed, "Oh, I see."

Thanks to a lack of respect for school property and an unhealthy amount of guile, Sam had managed to put together a corner fit for a homeless king, or at least a teenage rebel who frequently ditched classes. The hideout sat on the corner directly opposite the door, shielded from the school by the mountain of boxes. Sam had managed to clear out an area of about 25 square feet, complete with a heating vent, an electrical outlet, and a window outside. The room within a room was mostly bare, with a handful of books of various genres littering the area. Supported by the wall of the room and some shifted boxes, a large gym mat served as a makeshift futon, with a plastic milk crate and short wooden stool serving as alternative places to take a seat. The last piece of furniture was a medium sized red cooler.

As Freddie took in the scenery, Sam knelt down to the cooler and opened it up. Once she had peered into the cooler, she called over her shoulder, "Do you want something to drink? I've got apple juice, apple juice, apple juice, apple juice, apple …"

"I'll have apple juice, Sam," interrupted Freddie as he tested the stability of the short wooden stool with his right foot.

"That's a very nice choice," complimented Sam as she removed an apple juice from the cooler. Freddie barely caught the container as the girl hurled it at him. As he looked up at the now standing girl, he noticed that she was holding a different container of liquid. Having noticed the movement of his eyes, she added, "It also leaves me with the sole iced tea."

Shaking his head, he took a seat on the wooden stool. Peering down at the juice, Freddie noticed that it was the exact same brand of apple juice that the school served at lunch. Pushing down the feeling of panic in his stomach that arose as he realized that there was no way that Sam had permission to use or owned anything in the immediate area, he opened up and began to imbibe the pilfered liquid.

"So, what do you need?" asked Sam, deciding to cut to the chase as she took a seat on the gym mat and opened up her iced tea.

The question caught the boy off guard, something Freddie easily gave away because he was drinking apple juice at the time. Sam didn't stop herself from giggling as the boy coughed the juice back up. Even though he knew he had been caught in an act of idiocy he still tried to play it cool, questioning in a voice that he swore didn't squeak (this would be a future point of contention between the two teenagers), "What makes you think I need something?"

Sam took a long drink from her iced tea, an action that left Freddie unsettled since her eyes continued to stay locked onto his. The feeling of being led up to a guillotine was creeping back into his spine. Once the iced tea was lowered back down to her waist, she counted the fingers on her left hand as she listed, "This hall is in an isolated section of the building. I know you don't take any art classes. You don't have any friends, let alone artistic friends. Obviously you've come here looking for me."

Freddie allowed an impressed smile to grace his lips as he complimented, "You know, you can be pretty smart when you're not busy being evil."

Sam found herself smiling back as she shot back, "I would take that as a compliment if I weren't so busy thinking evil thoughts." Shaking her head to clear the smile, she again asked, "So, what do you need? Or are you planning to skip classes with me?"

And thus arrived the moment of truth. Freddie had never asked a girl out to an event before, so he found himself at a loss for what to do and say in the situation. Panicked, he decided to follow along with the only romantic proposal sequence that he could think of at the time. He stood up off of the stool, dropped to one knee, reached into his pocket, pulled out a number two pencil, offered it up to the girl solemnly, and asked in a serious voice, "Sam, will you go to the dance with me?"

And thus it was Sam's turn to viciously expel liquid from her throat as a punishing fit of both shock and laughter wracked her body. Unfortunately for Freddie, Sam was not as polite as he was, so the spit out liquid ended up on his face. Like a trooper, Freddie maintained his position, aware that he had just done something stupid on multiple levels, but unable to think of anything else to do.

After recovering from the outburst, Sam's eyes moved from the pencil, to Freddie's face, and finally to the iced tea that was splattered all over him. This of course threw her into another fit of laughter. She didn't recover from this one until Freddie coughed loudly to get her attention. In order to prevent herself from lapsing into yet another round of laughter, Sam turned her eyes towards the ceiling and pondered her current situation.

She imagined herself dancing with Freddie all night long: he was dressed up in light slacks and a dress shirt, and smiling the smile he only used for Carly. The speakers in the gymnasium blasted fast music which they answered with an energetic flailing of limbs. Then the music slowed down, and they were closer together, much closer than they had ever been before. Her mind wandered over these thoughts, and she found them pleasing. The thought frightened her.

Freddie's knee was starting to give way, and he imagined that he could actually feel the iced tea drying up into spots of stickiness on his face. Just as he was about give up his position, Sam finally asked evenly, "Carly put you up to this, right?"

"Right," answered Freddie immediately.

"No," stated Sam, her word sharpened with an edge of finality.

"No?" questioned Freddie. He hadn't expected a rejection. That's why he was supremely confused as Sam all but picked him up and tossed him outside of the storage room. As he lay in the hallway on his belly, his first thought was why he hadn't expected a rejection. Eventually he abandoned the thought, picked himself up off of the ground and attempted to re-enter the room. He found the door was locked, so he had to settle for knocking on the door and calling loudly, "Sam?" He tried to peek into the room, but all he could see from the small window were the boxes and discarded art projects. Eventually he drew the attention of a passing teacher who quickly shooed him away from the art wing.

Meanwhile, Sam sat underneath the doorway with her arms wrapped around her legs. Her thoughts were being troublesome today, so she tried to block them out by focusing on some of the art projects that were sitting directly in front of her. To her chagrin, the one that caught her eye was a sculpture of two figures. Though they were formless, their faces smooth and their bodies sexless, they were colorful and it was clear from the positioning of their bodies that they were engaged in some kind of dance. Well, either that or the larger figure was preparing to hurl the smaller one like a hammer. She attempted to force herself into imagining dancing with a faceless stranger, but now the only person she could imagine opposite her was Freddie.

"Stupid Carly," muttered Sam as she allowed her head to rest against the doorway. Her eyes again rose up towards the ceiling.

Maybe she was a girl after all.

* * *


	3. iHave To Do Everything Around Here

Chapter 3: iHave To Do Everything Around Here

* * *

It had been two class periods since Carly had sent Freddie off to ask Sam to the dance and she was beginning to become nervous. After all, two class periods in high school were equivalent to two days in the outside world. Possible scenarios began to play out in Carly's mind. Maybe Sam had been so offended that she had tossed Freddie into a locker. Another possibility was that Freddie had chickened out and was now hiding in a corner somewhere, upset with himself for letting her down. Then again, maybe Sam had answered Freddie's request with a passionate kiss, and her two best friends were now making out in some secluded corner of the school. 

That last thought had been so ludicrous that Carly actually burst into uncontrollable laughter. Since she had been quietly walking down the hall when the thought occurred to her, her sudden outburst drew more than a few puzzled looks. Aware that she was causing a scene, Carly quieted her emotions and hid herself next to a row of lockers. While she waited for the random students to turn their attention away from her, she spotted Freddie walking down the hallway.

The teenage boy was so deeply mired in his own thoughts that he didn't notice when Carly waved at him as he passed by. This being the first time he had not noticed her in their long history together, Carly's nervousness deepened into concern. After shaking her head to clear her thoughts, the girl walked up behind her friend, tapped him on the shoulder and asked, "Got a date to the dance?"

Freddie had literally jumped at Carly's touch, but immediately recognized both the tone of her voice and the content of her words. Turning around quickly, he shook his head at his friend. As a rueful grin formed on his face, he asked, "I don't suppose your date cancelled on you?"

"Sorry, Freddie," apologized Carly sincerely. "Hey, do you have time to tell me what happened?" As she asked the question she indicated a nearby wall with a toss of her head.

Freddie gave his friend a slight nod, and so the two set themselves up against the wall. Freddie's back was leaning against the wall for support, both of his hands finding their way into his pockets with his school books nestled in the crook of his right arm. Carly stood off to his right side, her own books held in her folded arms and her head angled in towards him so that she could hear every detail. Once they were both comfortable, Freddie divulged the entire tale; from finding Sam in the art wing to being tossed outside of the room. When he was finished, he discovered that Carly was no longer leaning in towards him. Instead, she was standing with her right hand stroking her chin as her eyes looked off into the distance. "So, what do you think?" asked Freddie, bringing Carly back into reality.

"Well, obviously Sam does want to go to the dance," said Carly. After Freddie nodded his agreement, Carly continued, "Now the problem is finding someone she wants to go with."

Freddie felt a lump rising in the back of his throat for no discernable reason. He could hear his voice tightening as he asked, "So you think the only reason she said no was because it was me asking?"

Carly's right arm reached out to pat Freddie on the shoulder consolingly. "Don't worry; you're not the first person she violently turned down today."

The boy's right eyebrow rose upon receiving this piece of news. "I don't get it," said the boy honestly after turning it over in his mind for a few seconds.

In the rapid fire English that only girls are capable of pulling off, Carly explained, "Well a little while before we met and I asked you to ask Sam to go to the dance, Germy asked Sam. Sam refused with a shove that knocked the poor guy unconsciousness. I guess looking back on it, you were kind of lucky to get through it unhurt."

"Yeah, I guess," agreed Freddie shakily, a small insincere smile finding its way to his lips. So that was what had happened to Germy.

Carly's natural perceptiveness caught his uncertainty. Leaning forward slightly, Carly asked, "Do you think there was another reason she said no?"

Freddie's gaze lifted up as he answered, "No, you're probably right. She probably said no because she can't stand being around me five minutes without you around." His eyes dropped down to the ground then, taking a hard look at the concrete floor of the school as he added, "Still, for a moment there, I could have sworn she was going to say yes."

"What do you mean?" asked Carly. "I thought you said you offered her the pencil, asked her out to the dance, and then she tossed you out of the room."

"Well, after I asked her to the dance she kind of paused for a while," recalled Freddie, his eyes still attached to the floor. "Then she asked if you put me up to it."

Carly's face paled suddenly as she realized what might have happened. "And you said I did, didn't you?"

"Well, yeah," said Freddie with a shrug of his shoulders. "I don't lie to my friends."

"Oh Freddie," sighed Carly dramatically. Her right hand again reached up to pat the boy on the shoulder as she stated, "You're so smart, yet still just a boy."

The boy's eyebrows knit together in consternation as he tried to puzzle together her words. "I don't get it," he complained after an extended moment's worth of thought.

"Don't worry about it," said Carly through a smile. The girl hefted her books back into her arms before she continued, "I'm going to go apologize to Sam. You said the room was right at the end of the art wing?"

"Yeah, on the left side coming in from A hall," confirmed Freddie as he stretched his back a little bit. It had grown a little sore from leaning against the wall for so long.

As they were both about to go their separate ways, Carly suddenly asked, "Hey, Freddie, can I ask you one more question?"

"Sure, Carly," said Freddie, again turning towards his friend.

"Other than me and Sam, is there another girl in this school that you would even consider asking to the dance?"

The question hit Freddie pretty hard. He was left alone with that thought as Carly wandered off down the hall.

* * *

Freddie hadn't been kidding when he said that the room was at the end of the art wing. A few more feet down the hall and one would be outside of the school building. A quick peek in the window confirmed the mountain of boxes and art projects that the boy had mentioned. Carly checked the hall to make sure that no one was really paying attention to her before she knocked on the door and forcefully whispered, "Sam, are you in there? It's me, Carly."

It took a few knocks before Sam realized that someone was at the door trying to get in. Putting down the Harry Potter novel she had been perusing at the moment, she quietly crept towards the door on her hands and knees. She wasn't able to make out Carly's voice until she was a few feet from the door, but once she did she immediately stood up and allowed her friend inside. After she had locked the door after her friend, she pleaded, "Wait there a second. It's pretty messy back here."

Like a polite houseguest, Carly stood in place and admired the storage room décor as Sam rushed around the room stacking books and kicking empty containers into a pile. After a minute or two, a breathless Sam called, "You can come in now."

"This is nice," commented Carly as she stepped inside of the enclosure and took in Sam's living arrangements.

Sam beamed proudly at her friend as she ushered her in. Indicating the gym mat with a flourish of her left arm, she said, "Take a seat. You want some apple juice?"

"No thanks," said Carly as she carefully placed herself against the propped up gym mat. It was surprisingly more comfortable than it appeared, so the girl put her full weight against the back of the mat and folded her hands behind her head as a makeshift headrest. "This is very nice," the girl corrected with a grin.

Sam hopped next to her friend, adopting a similar posture as she said, "My philosophy is if you're going to skip class a lot, you might as well do it comfortably."

From her reclined position, Carly noticed a poster of Drake Bell pinned to a nearby box. Her face scrunching up, she stated, "I still don't see how you can like that boob." Noticing that Sam's sole response to her comment was a shrug, Carly sat up and began rummaging through a stack of books that lay next to the mat. "Why didn't I know about this place before?" she asked absentmindedly.

Sam shrugged exaggeratedly as she answered, "It's kind of private, and you never really ditch class with me." She turned her eyes towards her friend then, expecting her to have picked up a book. To her surprise, Carly was looking straight at her, a cat-like grin on her face. "What?" Sam asked suspiciously.

"Freddie never ditches class either," said Carly with an accusatory tone coloring her words.

"Yeah, well," stuttered Sam. Carly had caught her off guard, so the best that she could come up with after a moment of stammering was a hopeful, "You know."

"Yeah, I guess," conceded Carly easily, her eyes taking in the uncomfortable expression on Sam's face. Her lips morphed into an apologetic smile as she explained, "So, I came to apologize for dumping Freddie on your lap earlier."

Sam's eyes immediately shifted towards those of her friend. Finding no real answer there, she asked, "What do you mean?"

"When I told him earlier that I had a date to the dance, he became really depressed," lied Carly, her gaze moving away from her friend's in an attempt to cover up the truth. "I figured since you wanted to go to the dance, you two could go together."

"Why us two?" asked Sam, her eyes narrowing reflexively at the whiff of a set up.

Aware that she was being doubted, Carly quickly locked her eyes back onto those of her friend and said, "Well, you would have someone to dance with, and Freddie wouldn't be so depressed at being left alone on the computer." It wasn't hard to spout truth. Even if it wasn't the whole truth, it was, after all, nothing but the truth.

Convinced that Carly wasn't lying, Sam said slowly, "Well, if it was to help him be less of a dork, I guess I would have gone for it if I knew."

"That's great!" exclaimed Carly, as she hopped up onto her feet. As she began to head towards the door leaving a stunned Sam sitting on the gym mat, she called over her shoulder, "I'll get him to ask you again."

Here was the set up that Sam had sniffed earlier. She should have gone with her instinct and halted the conversation. Desperate for a way out, the girl tried to reason, "But I already said no. He's not going to ask me again."

"You just leave that to me," said Carly quickly. After she unlocked the door and stepped outside, she turned back into the room once more and called out, "It's so nice of you to help out our friend, Sam. I knew you had it in you."

Even as she heard the door close behind her friend, Sam remained seated on the gym mat, wondering how Carly always managed to get her to do things she normally wouldn't agree to do. It looked like she was doomed/destined to go to the dance with Freddie. Before her mind could settle on which D word she found more appropriate, she picked up the Harry Potter book and attempted to lose her thoughts in Hogwarts.

* * *

"Hey, Jeremy!" called Freddie as he jogged up to his friend. He had spotted his lumbering body as he was walking down the hallway towards class. After catching up to the boy, he exclaimed, "It's good to see you up and about!" 

"Oh, I guess you saw me after I asked Sam," said Germy, his sentence masked by a stuffy nose but miraculously not one sneeze.

The feat did not go unnoticed by Freddie, who clasped his friend on the shoulder as he commented, "That's the first time I've heard you finish a sentence without sneezing in a long time."

"It's the weirdest thing," said the boy, his head shaking in disbelief as they moved to the side of the hallway. "Ever since Sam pushed me into unconsciousness, I haven't had to sneeze at all."

Freddie's eyebrow rose at his friend as he asked, "So you're saying Sam's shove stopped your sneezes?"

A troubled grin lit up Germy's face as he answered, "Not with so many S's, but yeah."

"That's great for you, man," congratulated Freddie with a sad shake of his head. "All I got from my rejection was a sore stomach."

"I guess so, it feels kind of weird," complained the teenager. Germy then peered quizzically at his friend as he questioned, "Wait, you asked Sam to the dance too?"

Freddie nodded stoically. "We're brothers-in-the-punishing-end-of-Sam's-arms." The two teens shared a laugh at the ridiculous title. Once the laugh finished, they were left with a pregnant pause that Freddie eventually broke by asking, "Hey, Jeremy. Why did you ask Sam to the dance?"

Germy looked away from Freddie for a moment to collect his thoughts. Once he was sure he had his thoughts straight, he looked back at his friend and said simply, "She just seemed like the right girl to go to a dance with."

A skeptical look appeared on Freddie's face as he tried to think about what would make Sam the ideal dance partner. Coming up with a blank, he help up his palms helplessly, the universal sign for, "I got nothing."

Germy took yet another moment before answering more verbosely, "She's got a nice sense of humor, and she's never quiet. Oh, and she doesn't act like I don't exist." Freddie was about to assure his friend that he surely existed to other girls in the school, but Germy interrupted him by adding, as if an afterthought, "And she's pretty."

Freddie had found himself nodding at all of Germy's points about Sam's eligibility to go to the dance. Even, to his surprise, the last one. The thought tripped him up, effectively stalling up his thoughts until Germy asked, "So why did you ask her?"

The boy's immediate thought was to respond with the safe answer that Carly had asked him to. As he was about to voice that thought, however, something inside him made him answer, "Pretty much the same reasons."

The conversation then shifted to their usual topics of video games and television. The boys shared similar interests so some obscure fact about a program they both watched had the possibility of keeping them chatting for hours. And it probably would have if Sam hadn't walked down the hallway.

* * *

When Sam was in a class skipping mood, there were only a couple reasons that she would leave the class dodging comfort of her hideout. The first, lunch, was only if her cooler wasn't stocked properly. As it had been filled recently thanks to a lunch lady leaving the storage room unlocked, the reason Sam was out and about had to be for the only class she truly enjoyed: physical education. The girl had always been gifted with above average physical prowess. Gym class gave her the chance to show it off, usually with a dose of unnecessary roughness.

Today they were supposed to be playing dodgeball, one of Sam's favorite games. The teachers actually allowed you to throw objects as hard as you could at other students. If that rule carried over to other classes, then she wouldn't ever skip class again. She immediately lapsed into a daydream of sitting through an entire history class without dozing off, the lecture accompanied by an unending hail of projectiles. She was launching everything within reach into the air: paper airplanes, pens, books, shoes. All of the objects unerringly flew through the air towards their intended target: a cowering, whimpering Freddie.

After catching herself concentrating on the image of Freddie she immediately forced the thought from her mind. Once that had been accomplished, she mentally berated herself for lapsing into something that had required a healthy amount of both Daniel Radcliffe and Drake Bell to get rid of. Now Freddie's image was back in her mind: laughing whole heartedly, screaming in terror, asking her out to the dance. She could even swear that he was walking towards her at that very moment with Germy following shyly at his heel. Wait, she wouldn't imagine Germy. This wasn't a daydream. Freddie was actually walking towards her.

Sam's fight or flight reflex kicked in hard. Anyone who knew Sam Puckett knew that her personality pushed the reflex's probability to 99 percent fight and 1 percent flight. It therefore came as little surprise to Freddie when Sam ripped off her left shoe and hurled it at him at a speed that a professional baseball player could appreciate. The boy dodged the shoe easily, his eyes following the projectile as it soared over his crouched form and connected with the forehead of Germy. The germ troubled boy stood dazed for a moment, shuffling his feet awkwardly for a few seconds before succumbing to the darkness and falling to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Both Freddie and Sam immediately rushed to the downed teen: Freddie to check on his friend's condition, and Sam to retrieve her shoe. Once Freddie had made sure that Germy was still breathing and Sam had replaced the shoe on her left foot, the two teenagers' eyes met across the prone form of Germy.

* * *

Carly turned a corner on her way to gym class. She knew she could count on Sam to be there, so she would have another period to warm her up to the idea before she somehow convinced Freddie to ask Sam again. With her mind racing from idea to idea, she didn't notice the group of students crowding around some kind of spectacle until she had almost collided with it. Ever curious, she tapped a student on the outskirts of the crowd, and asked, "What's up?" 

The kid turned away from trying to peek over the students ahead of him, answering quickly, "Some girl knocked a geek out with her shoe."

A cold feeling spread throughout her stomach as Carly put the pieces together. Freddie could easily classify as a geek and one of Sam's favorite weapons were her shoes. Imitating something she had seen Sam do multiple times, Carly transformed into a riot shield, cutting through the crowd in front of her with an unending combination of elbows and shoves. Eventually she made it close enough to the front to make out the words of her bickering friends.

* * *

"Why did you have to toss a shoe at me?" asked Freddie incredulously, his eyes shifting between Sam and Germy. 

Her own eyes locked on Freddie, Sam shrugged nonchalantly before cryptically answering, "I already ignored my instincts once today. I wasn't about to make the same mistake twice."

Freddie's arms spread out wide as he exclaimed, "You just knocked him out for the second time today!"

Sam let go of her frustration with the boy's questions through a resigned sigh. She didn't have the time or desire to explain things to Freddie. A crowd had gathered around them and crowds attracted teachers like garbage attracted flies. "I need to get out of here before Ms. Briggs shows up," called Sam as she turned around. Just as she was about to barrel through the onlookers, she felt a hand grab at her arm. 

Frozen in place more by surprise than grip strength, Sam's eyes moved steadily; from the hand to the arm, to Freddie in general, to the boy's face, and finally to his eyes. The girl's own eyes narrowed as she found an uncommon resilience shining within Freddie's. He wasn't possibly about to ask her again here, in front of all of these people. Fighting hard to keep a blush from touching her cheeks, she somehow managed to snarl, "Let go of me!"

Freddie's grip didn't loosen under the ferocity of Sam's tone. In a clear, annoyingly loud voice, he declared, "I need to ask you something, Sam."

Sam helplessly felt her cheeks flush lightly. He really was going to ask her again in front of all of these people. The girl unaccustomed to embarrassment felt it intensely as she was placed in a situation far outside of her comfort zone. In the blink of an eye, the embarrassment shifted to shame, then to the comfortable feeling of anger. Here he was again to throw her thoughts into turmoil at the beckoning of another girl. Prepared to rip off his hand at the wrist, she asked in a harsh whisper, "Are you really ready to be rejected in front of an audience this time?"

The girl's words forced Freddie to realize that a handful of students had gathered around them. Freddie, a person who did not seek out the limelight, found his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. His eyes moved from bystander to bystander in a type of raw panic, his body paralyzed by this unexpected round of stage fright.

Carly sensed the bad shift in mood had been caused by the crowd and came up with an immediate, effective remedy. In a panicked voice, she shouted out, "It's Ms. Briggs!" Ms. Briggs was known to meander though the halls handing out detentions for minor misdemeanors like wearing hats indoors or walking down a hallway too quickly. Since congesting the hallway was probably worth a full month of detentions, the crowd quickly dispersed, leaving the three friends standing over the unconscious body of Germy.

Carly was relieved to see that both of her friends looked significantly more in control of their emotions with the bystanders gone. Still, it was like a scene of a showdown from an old school Western. Freddie had regained control over his eyes and was looking directly at Sam who returned his gaze with anger fueled interest. Carly stepped forward taking her eyes off of the scene to tap Germy with her left foot and make sure that he was still alive. When the unconscious boy groaned and rolled over to his other side, Carly asked in an innocent voice, "So Freddie, what were you going to ask Sam?"

Forced to reveal his thoughts first, Freddie said in a determined voice, "Sam, go to the dance with me."

Sam's eyes shifted to Carly before returning to the boy. In a voice much softer than either of her friends expected, she said, "You're only asking because Carly is manipulating you."

"Not this time," interrupted Carly. When Sam's eyes moved to her, she explained, "I haven't seen either of you since I left your hideout, Sam."

The blond girl's eyebrow furrowed upon received this knowledge. Turning her attention back towards Freddie, Sam demanded, "Why are you asking again, then? Nothing's changed since the last time I tossed you!"

His voice losing some of the volume, yet none of the determination, he answered, "I realized something since then."

"What?" asked both of the girls simultaneously.

"You and I would have fun together," said Freddie with a wide grin.

Sam stared at the boy as though he were crazy. "What makes you think we're going to have fun?"

Freddie finally relinquished his hold on the girl, allowing him to indicate the entire situation with a wide sweeping of his arms. Still grinning as largely as he possibly could, he challenged, "Don't tell me these past ten minutes have been boring."

Sam's mind flashed through what had just happened; from tossing the shoe, to the gathered crowd, and the heated argument. A smile finally graced her face as she tentatively agreed, "It hasn't been that bad."

Heartened by the smile on Sam's face, he dug the pencil out of his pocket and smiled charmingly as he again offered it to her.

The girl's thoughts ran wild once more, edging her hand towards the pencil. Just as she was about to accept the writing utensil, the part of her that loved to tease Freddie forced her to pull her hand back and add in the stipulation, "The moment I get bored, I'm dumping you for a cuter guy."

Used to Sam's acerbic wit, he verbally parried, "Sure, but good luck finding an unattached, cuter guy at the dance."

Sam snatched the pencil from his grasp then. As she deftly twirled it between her fingers, she said with a smirk, "You would be surprised how easy it is to scare a girl away from her date."

The two began to walk away then, easily alternating between rounds of verbal sparring and the details of their dance arrangements. Carly followed closely behind, all but unnoticed by her two best friends yet pleasantly surprised by the recent turn of events.

Perhaps she didn't have to do everything after all.

* * *


	4. iDidn't Realize What I Was Getting Into

Chapter 4: iDidn't Realize What I Was Getting Myself Into

* * *

The image on the screen bobbed its head rhythmically to the beat, a movement that Freddie easily imitated. Suddenly the music swelled in volume, causing the image to propagate a wave that started at the tip of his fingers and undulated throughout the rest of his body. Again Freddie imitated what he saw on the screen but with remarkably less success thanks to the large amount of time he spent in front of a computer screen. Finally, it became obvious to both Freddie and the image that the song was coming to a close as the music picked up in both ferocity and urgency. The image responded by launching itself backwards in the air. After staring at the image in disbelief, the boy's own response was to close the video file. 

As the boy marveled over the dangers of modern dancing, he moved over to his bed and allowed his eyes to wander over the clothes he had painstakingly placed on top of it. His pillows lay beneath a plain white undershirt and a blue-striped, white pair of boxer shorts. More towards the center he had placed a sea green, button-front, dress shirt stylized with random, stitched, jungle green, flame-like shapes. A pair of black, fitted, pinstripe pants complete with a non-descript deep brown dress belt was pressed and folded directly next to the shirt. He would match the items with the dark suede sports jacket and the brown, smooth leather loafers that waited in the closet next to the door out of his apartment.

Everything looked to be in order so the boy slowly crept towards the bathroom. Normally taking a shower in his own house did not require stealth, but Freddie was trying to pull off mission impossible: get to the dance without letting his mom know about it. He felt slightly bad about keeping her in the dark. He knew that his mother would be ecstatic to see her son off to the dance, but he also knew from personal, painful experience that his mother's enthusiasm tended to cause him more harm than good.

The teenager made it to the bathroom and began his shower without any problems. The shower turned out to be a fast, tension filled affair since throughout the entire shower all of his senses were tuned to the rest of the apartment. After cleansing himself to his own satisfaction he stepped out of the shower, wrapped the lower half of his body in a towel, and opened the bathroom door gingerly. His head escaping the room along with a heavy mist, he peeked up and down the hallway twice before tiptoeing out and beginning the long creep back into his room.

He had managed about three steps before he heard the familiar, dreaded sound of slipper wearing feet rapidly shuffling towards him. Although he could not stop a horrified screech from escaping his lips, he had learned from countless horror movies to not waste time turning around to confirm he was being chased. Instead he kept his eyes locked on his bedroom door as he bolted down the hallway, his feet kicking wildly through the air.

* * *

Sam's feet kicked lightly as they dangled off of the edge of the bed. She was sitting in Carly's bedroom watching some boring television program about forensic scientists investigating the death of some old cat lady. A set of commercials had just started, so Sam peeled her eyes off of the television and secretly watched Carly as she applied makeup to her face. It looked like such an unnecessarily long process to Sam. Carly would spend entire television programs painting her face with expensive products that would only be washed off in a handful of hours, when she could be doing something more productive. You know, like watching television.

As Carly carefully applied the medium shade of eyeliner to the crease above her eyes, she noticed in the mirror that she had managed to capture Sam's attention. There was a vacant look of interest and wonder on Sam's face as she tried to watch her friend from the corner of her eyes. A small smile formed on Carly's lips as she called out, "Watching something good?"

A slight stiffening of her body gave away the fact that she had been caught in an act of subterfuge. Hoping that Carly hadn't caught on, she forced her eyes back on the television screen and quickly answered, "It's alright. I think the kids did it." In her peripheral vision she noticed Carly stand up from her chair and steadily approach her. Still clinging to her initial hope, she half-heartedly complained, "Kids are so rotten nowadays."

There was a teasing lilt to Carly's voice as she said, "You're really one to talk there, Sam."

Sam turned towards her friend with a fake expression of hurt painted on her face. "Just what do you mean by that?" As she looked at her friend dead on, she found that Carly was holding up a small box of make-up next to her face. The expression of hurt converted to one of suspicion as she asked, "What are you doing with that?"

Carly ignored her question for a second as her eyes bounced back and forth between the container and Sam's face. Once she seemed to have made a decision, she finally said, "I'm trying to decide what color of concealer would best match your skin tone."

Sam jumped backwards, retreating to a farther corner of the bed. As she moved she grabbed one of Carly's pillows and held it up as an impromptu barrier. From behind the pillow, she growled in a low, threatening tone, "We've been over this before, Carly. Make-up and I do not mix well together." Hearing the make-up container snap shut, Sam slowly let down the pillow.

When Carly came back into view, she was standing with her hands on her hips and her head cocked to her left side. The brunette girl's eyes scanned up and down Sam's body leisurely, the predatory quality of her eyes making Sam uncomfortable enough to again equip her pillow shield. From behind the pillow, Sam heard Carly ask, "Do you sweat a lot?"

"No!" answered Sam quickly. Seconds after giving her answer she realized that perhaps victims of hyperhydrosis couldn't wear make-up. Upon conceiving that thought, she immediately revised her answer to, "Actually, I sweat like a pig. It's ridiculous. I have to wear three undershirts to soak it all up." Carly didn't say anything in response, so she felt comfortable enough to again lower the pillow.

Carly was standing over her friend, squinting at the box with a frustrated frown on her face. "I can't seem to make out what this says," she complained. Her eyes shifted from the container to her friend as she asked, "What does it look like to you?" As she asked the question, she turned the box towards Sam and held it out at arm's length.

Sam scooted forward close enough to read the words, which were in a rather small print. As her eyes focused on the words, she read out loud, "All powders contained within are water-proof." Just as she read the last word, Carly pressed a button on the box and the cover shot open revealing four different shades of concealer and a mirror. Sam's eyes rapidly shot from the mirror to Carly's face. A mischievous smile had taken up residence there, and her eyes were gazing hungrily at her. "Carly. Carly, no," commanded the blonde with a slight quivering of her voice.

"Just a little bit, Sam," assured Carly with a tone that promised a lot more than the words' definitions suggested. "You have a tiny blemish on your right cheek."

Sam crawled backwards remarkably quickly, so much so that she was backed up against the wall before she even realized she had begun moving. Carly had knelt onto the bed by then and was steadily moving towards her. The brunette girl was dipping some kind of sponge into the container in a move that seemed almost menacing. As she raised it up in the air and slowly began to move it towards her face, Sam again held the pillow between herself and Carly as she shrieked, "Nooooo!"

* * *

The powder puff connected with nothing but air as Freddie dodged his mother's attack effortlessly. He was used to his mother trying to apply makeup to him in preparation for events like award ceremonies, dates, and stepping out of the apartment. He had developed a sixth sense for the powder puff and was able to feel it coming from any angle. It was a shame that sense didn't carry over to things that Sam threw at him. 

Her plan to apply foundation to her son's face again thwarted, Mrs. Benson turned her attention towards the clothes that lay on the bed. The colors were a little strong for her liking, but at least everything matched and was properly pressed. Her Freddie was such a neat boy. "Freddie," she said out loud as a thought struck her. "Aren't these clothes a little extravagant for a trip to the mall?"

Freddie kept his mouth shut. She had assumed he was going to the mall without any input from him after busting down his door and seeing the clothes on the bed. Hopefully she would push herself back onto that assumption if he continued to keep his mouth shut. After all, if he was incapable of lying to his friends, then the very possibility of lying to his mother did not exist.

His mother destroyed his dream of leaving hassle free with one sentence, "Freddie, you're not going to the mall, are you?"

The boy took a deep breath to calm him down before saying slowly, "Mom, you have to promise not to freak out." His mother nodded quickly, but Freddie could see an excited glimmer in her eye. Still speaking at a tortoise-like pace, he stated, "I'm going to a dance at my school."

It was impossible to read the expression on Mrs. Benson's face for the mere fact that the woman's emotions were tearing her in an infinite number of emotional directions. One side of her wanted to scold the boy for not allowing her to prepare for the event properly. Another side wanted to scoop him up in her arms and twirl him around the room for escaping the lure of his computer. Then there was the facet of her personality that was critically analyzing how well he had cleaned himself in the shower. And yet another part of her was tossing together possible outfits to replace the ones on the bed.

His mother caught in emotional limbo, Freddie found it surprisingly easy to gently push her outside of the room so that he could change. He was just about to close the door on her when she regained enough control over herself to ask, "Do you have a date?"

Grimacing, he made sure that the door was just about to close before he answered, "Yes." The sound of the door closing was soon overwhelmed by a shriek of excitement. He could hear his mother galloping down the hallway, probably to call his grandmother on the phone and brag that Freddie was going to a dance with someone other than his first cousin Stephanie. Shaking his head, he picked up the underwear off of his bed and began to dress himself.

He was in the process of buttoning up his shirt when he heard a knock on the door. "What is it, Mom?" called Freddie cautiously.

"Do you need me to drive you to pick the young girl up, Freddie?" she asked sweetly, her voice slightly muffled by the locked door. "I know you probably agreed to meet at the school, but this way you could have a few more minutes with your date and I could scree … meet her."

"No need, Mom," assured Freddie loudly. "She's right across the hall." There was another squeal from behind the doorway, followed by an extended silence. Realizing that his mother probably thought he was going with Carly, he immediately called out, "Mom, I'm not going with Carly. I'm going with Sam."

Having not heard the sound of his mother attempting to bash down the doorway or faint dead away, Freddie received a bad premonition of things to come. "Mom?" he called as he approached his bedroom door. After not hearing an answer, he ran towards the door and flung it open. His mother was nowhere to be found. Groaning, Freddie jumped out of his room, ready to sprint to Carly's apartment. Before he sped off, he made sure to slam his bedroom door shut.

* * *

The refrigerator door closed with a loud bang that caused Carly to jump off of her seat at the counter. "Spencer!" she shouted. "I told you not to slam that door!" 

"I would have loved to comply with that desire, dear Sister," assured Spencer as he waddled past Carly, his arms loaded with sandwich making supplies. "Unfortunately, as you can see, I'm a little encumbered at the moment."

Carly sighed and sat back down on the stool, watching as her brother concocted whatever sandwich suited his whims. Apparently there were quite a few whims floating around him today. In addition to the traditional loaf of bread, sandwich meat, and cheese, Spencer had pulled out a banana, an apple, some bleu cheese dressing, peanut butter, ice cream, and soy sauce. Hoping that her brother was planning on preparing more than just a sandwich but knowing in her heart that he was not, she watched on in morbid fascination.

As Spencer began peeling the skin off of the apple with a knife, he asked, "So I'm bringing you and Sam to the school and picking you up whenever you call me, right?"

While her mind began to predict what the sandwich was going to look like when Spencer was finished, Carly corrected, "Actually, Freddie is coming with us too."

Spencer stopped the peeling of the apple to look up at his sister with a surprised grin. "You guys have Freddie coming to something like a dance? That's a first." His attention returned to the apple as he offhandedly asked, "Did you promise to dance with him or something?"

Carly leaned toward her brother conspiratorially and said in a loud whisper, "He's actually going with Sam."

The young adult looked up from his apple in absolute shock. His eyebrows were raised high and his smile was so large that his mouth was forced open. Carly couldn't hold back her laughter when Spencer had on that silly face. Luckily, or unluckily depending on which Shea sibling you were at the moment, the face didn't last long since Spencer had continued to cut the apple through his shock. The expression disappeared into a pained frown as he quietly put down the apple and the knife and began to look for the kitchen's supply of bandages.

While her brother rummaged through the cabinets, Carly hopped off of her stool and picked up on the apple where Spencer had left off. Having found the bandages, Spencer went through the difficult motion of applying the bandage one handed. As he carefully attached an adhesive surface of the bandage to his finger, he commented, "It's about time those two started going out." Carly's face shot up once she heard her brother's words. Spencer nearly missed his finger with the other arm of the bandage when he noticed the warning glare she was shooting at him. "They're not going out, huh?" he asked abashedly.

"I think they're this close," predicted Carly, putting about an inch of space between her right thumb and pointer finger.

"They've been that close for forever," complained the recently patched up guardian. He moved back to the counter and began peeling the banana.

Carly nodded her agreement with her brother before adding in, "I think they're finally becoming aware of it, though." She had finished peeling the apple, so she held it up and asked, "Do you need me to do anything else with it?"

"Slices, Carly," commanded Spencer. "Cut it into really thick slices."

Raising her eyebrow, she complied easily. "You know, it would be cool if you could like check the status of their relationship for me," she said offhandedly.

"You want me to ask if they're going out or something?" Spencer asked as he began laying chunks of banana on a slice of rye bread.

"Kind of. Be more subtle," she said as she handed him the slices of apple. Accepting the slices, Spencer sprinkled the apple over the bananas. Carly further clarified, "Try to gauge how excited they are about going to the dance together."

"Gotcha," assured Spencer as he picked up the container of soy sauce and began dousing the fruits. Noticing the look of horror on his sister's face, he raised an eyebrow at her and asked, "Haven't you ever heard of sweet and sour pork?" Carly somehow managed to nod. Spencer gave a nod of his own towards his creation and dubbed it, "This is sweet and sour fruits."

Carly's groan was interrupted by a ringing of the doorbell. A quick glance at the clock told her that it wasn't Freddie since they weren't due to gather together for another half hour and he was impossibly impeccable when it came to meeting times. Peeking at her brother out of the corner of her eyes, she asked, "Are you expecting someone, Spencer?" Spencer shook his head negatively. Shrugging her shoulders lightly, she hopped off of her stool and called over her shoulder, "I'll get it, then." Upon opening the door, she was greeted with the sight of Mrs. Benson, who appeared to be on the verge of tears. "Mrs. Benson, are you alright? Did something happen to Freddie?" she asked worriedly.

Mrs. Benson lunged towards Carly with the speed of a tiger, enveloping her in her arms and holding her close. The shocked teenager heard the woman tearfully whisper in her ear, "I'm so happy to hear that you're going to join our family."

Unsure if detaching herself would be consider an act of extreme rudeness, Carly croaked out through Ms. Benson's lung collapsing hug, "I don't know what you mean."

"Don't be shy, Carly. I know you're going to the dance with Freddie," said Mrs. Benson, finally releasing Carly so that she could have a good look at her future daughter-in-law. She looked a little blue at the moment, but she was still as pretty as she remembered her. She was going to produce such beautiful grandchildren.

As Mrs. Benson stood there daydreaming about bouncing good looking grandchildren on her lap and Carly furiously thought up a way to let her down easily, Freddie's voice called out from beyond the doorway, "Mom, I'm not going to the dance with Carly."

While Carly breathed a sigh of relief, Mrs. Benson wheeled around and confusedly asked, "Then who are you going with?" She turned around to look into the room for Freddie's date. Other than Carly, there was only one other person she could see. A look of absolute horror hijacked her face as she tentatively pleaded, "Not Spencer. Oh God Freddie, please."

There was a moment of silence while all of the people in the room held their faces in their hands: Mrs. Benson had been overtaken by the feeling of horror, Freddie was hiding the flaming redness that was igniting his face, Carly was trying her hardest not to burst into laughter, and Spencer was attempting to remember whether or not he had purchased any A-1 sauce.

Freddie was the first to recover. His face was still burning red, but he was able to answer, "I'm going to the dance with Sam, Mom."

"Sam?" asked Mrs. Benson as she recovered from her terror. Quickly putting together the face with the name, she questioned Carly, "Your best friend, the tomboy?" After Carly nodded affirmatively, Mrs. Benson turned towards her son and placed her hands on his shoulders. Once they had made eye contact, she asked with a quivering voice, "Did she bully you into this, Freddie?"

"No, Mom," answered Freddie dryly. "I asked her."

Mrs. Benson swallowed hard before calling over her shoulder, "Oh my God, look what you've done to my son, Carly." She trapped Freddie in a bear hug before finishing, "The loneliness has driven my poor boy insane."

Carly could no longer hold back the laughter, so she retreated to the couch and let it all out. Her laughter was so loud that Sam, who had been upstairs debating whether to keep or wash off the make-up that Carly had painstakingly applied to her face, decided to go downstairs and check what all the commotion was about. Amidst the peals of laughter emanating from Carly, Mrs. Benson continued her interrogation. "Why did you ask her, Freddie?"

"She's one of my friends, Mom," he explained as calmly as he could while he struggled for air.

Mrs. Benson stared at her child incredulously before insistently asking, "Would a friend of yours ruin at least one pair of your underwear a week?"

"Mom!" Freddie cried exasperatedly as Carly fell victim to a fresh round of giggles. "You don't understand, she's …" he struggled a moment to remember what Germy had said earlier. As he wrestled with his memory, the elevator door opened, Sam stepped out, and Freddie unconsciously whispered, "gorgeous."

Sam Puckett's appearance was the direct result of constant nudging over the period of three hours by Carly Shea. Sam had shown up at the Shea residence dressed in what she had worn to school and was planning to stay that way until she went to bed that night. Upon entering Carly's bedroom, however, Carly just happened to find an old dress in her closet that would fit her. Once Sam had agreed to put it on, she had begun to slide down a slippery slope in which Carly bombarded her with items that she could borrow for the night. The ride had ended with Carly painting her face with what felt like a pound of make-up.

Freddie had the uncomfortably guilty pleasure of seeing the finished product of Carly's labor. Sam's hair was held up in a messy chignon, with a stray lock of hair escaping the updo to frame the right side of her face. The make-up Carly had painstakingly applied to Sam served to cover the minor imperfections on her face as well as to add further definition to her natural features. A sapphire panel front dress flowed over her lithe frame and came down to her lower thighs. The simple dress was sparingly decorated with caviar beads in a floral pattern that began at her shoulders and expanded as it came to the hem of the skirt and a black, velvet sash which wrapped underneath the bustline and finished in an elaborate bow on the back of the dress. Carly had iced her friend with silver jewelry; a small charm bracelet dangling from her right wrist, a short necklace with pearl beads, and a pair of pearl stud earrings. Her feet were resting in a trendy pair of white, soft leather loafers that had a 1 ½" heel and a black buckle towards the toes.

Again there was a moment of silence in the room as Sam assessed the situation of the room and everyone else gawked at her. The first to break the silence this time was Mrs. Benson, who edged closer to Carly and asked skeptically, "That's the tomboy?"

Carly flashed a full grin at Mrs. Benson before acknowledging, "I know, I was kind of surprised, too." She noticed with a start that Mrs. Benson was again tearing up. Fresh memories of slowly being crushed to death forced her to put her hands up in self defense.

Luckily for Carly's ribs, Mrs. Benson just cheerily stated, "My son is so perceptive to see that pretty girl underneath all of the dirt and brutality." That being said, she moved over to the kitchen to reward herself for raising such a perceptive son with a little bit of the ice cream that Spencer was currently scooping on top of a slice of American cheese.

Sam walked towards Freddie, her right eyebrow raised high above her eye. The movement snapped Freddie out of his enthrallment, allowing him to at least attempt some intelligent conversation. As she pulled within arms length of him, he managed to say, "You look amazing, Sam."

Freddie sobered up immediately when he noticed that Sam's face was prominently displaying the smirk that she reserved for his most humiliating moments. She teasingly replied, "You look underdressed, Freddie." A quick peek down confirmed the girl's words. He had been in such a rush to stop his mother that he had forgotten a very important part of his outfit: his pants.

Sighing heavily, he looked back up at Sam's face and asked seriously, "I'm never going to live this down, am I?"

Sam shook her head happily as she firmly replied, "Never."

"Hey, are you two going out now?" called Spencer as he dumped one last packet of soy sauce on his sandwich for good measure.

Carly, who had been rewarding herself for beautifying Sam with a cup of ice cream, immediately stomped on Spencer's foot and furiously whispered, "Spencer, I said subtle!"

At the other end of the room, in total synchronization Sam and Freddie flushed a similar shade of deep red, turned towards Spencer, and shouted at the top of their lungs, "No!"

"I think you two will make some nice looking kids together," called a voice behind Carly. The girl wheeled around, ready to stuff the sandwich deep into Spencer's throat while she lectured him on the definition of subtlety. To her surprise, the comment had come from Freddie's mom, who was cheerily scooping some Rocky Road into her mouth. A stupefied look on her face, Carly could only manage an astounded, "Mrs. Benson?"

Sam was petrified by feelings of embarrassment and horror, but Freddie, who was used to his mother's embarrassing comments, quickly moved to the counter, grabbed his mother's right elbow, and began escorting her out of the room. As they crossed the threshold of the front door, Freddie called out, "I'll be right back after I drop off my mom and pick up some pants."

Sam seemed to recover from her daze the moment that the front door shut and Mrs. Benson was out of hearing range. She marched towards the counter that the Shea siblings were seated at, wordlessly daring either one of them to say anything through glaring eyes. Spencer didn't have time to accept Sam's dare since he had begun eating his sandwich, and judging from his first couple of bites it would be an hour long affair. Carly kept her mouth shut like a good friend, but a hint of a smile was tickling the corner of her mouth.

Sam sat at the counter trapped in a catch 22: she didn't want either of the two siblings to bother her about what Mrs. Benson said, yet she needed somebody to lash out at to relieve her stress. It would have been great to have Freddie around. He would do something stupid, she would make fun of him, and she would feel on top of the world again. That was their perpetual routine, an unending verbal dance of give and take. In an hour they would be dancing physically, and she guiltily found that she was looking forward to it.

After taking an inventory of the table, she found only one food group suitable for her current emotional state. Grabbing a spoon and the entire container of ice cream, Sam proceeded to scoop the confection into her mouth.

* * *

The car ride to the school had been an awkward trip. As they were loading into Spencer's beat up automobile, Carly had made sure to claim shotgun to leave Sam and Freddie sitting together at the back. After five minutes of complete silence, Carly began constructing conversations. Unfortunately, neither of her friends seemed to be in a talkative mood, each of them answering her questions tersely as their eyes focused on things outside of the car. Upon giving up, Carly turned up the music slightly louder. Spencer looked over at his sister and found that she seemed to have disappeared into her worried thoughts. For the rest of the car ride, her arms were crossed against her chest and she lightly chewed on her lower lip. 

They arrived at the school without incident, and as soon as the car stopped both Sam and Freddie quickly thanked Spencer for the ride and exited out of their respective side doors. Carly had been so lost in her thoughts that she hadn't realized that the car had stopped, so Spencer nudged his little sister with his right elbow.

Carly awoke with a start, figuring out where she was only after she looked around. "Sorry about that," she apologized as she removed her seatbelt. "I was thinking a little hard." She was about to exit the car when she felt Spencer's hand on her shoulder. Looking back at her brother, she noticed he was wearing his rarely shown serious face.

"Carly, you're doing a good thing," he assured her. "Just don't push it so hard. It's not like they're going to have an epiphany all of a sudden," he said as he took a good look at Sam and Freddie who were awkwardly waiting for Carly on the sidewalk. "Subtlety, remember?"

A large smile appeared on Carly's face in reaction to Spencer's words. "If I'm being lectured in subtlety by you, Spencer, I must be going over the top."

Spencer returned her smile, indicating a miniscule space between his right thumb and pointer finger as he confirmed, "Just a little bit."

"Alright, thanks Spencer," said Carly as she stepped outside of the car feeling reinvigorated. After closing the car door, she joined her two friends and they walked towards the school together.

Almost immediately after entering the building, Carly spotted her date. "See you guys inside," said Carly as she jogged over to the tall, dark haired teenager. Freddie and Sam watched in utter silence as they embraced lightly and began to converse. The conversation lasted until Carly's date removed two tickets from his pants pocket and indicated a direction towards the gym with a wave of his arm. As they began to walk away, Carly grabbed his hand and they both beamed at each other.

A few moments were spent in uncomfortable silence, neither of the two teenagers having the courage to look at each other. Sam was the first one to finally speak, asking quietly, "You brought the tickets, right?"

Freddie fumbled through his pockets before producing the two stiff strips of paper. He attempted to imitate the wave that Carly's date had done, but the nervous feeling in his stomach embellished the motion to more of a curtsy.

Sam stifled a snicker, nudging the boy in the ribs with her elbow as she moved past him towards the gymnasium. As Freddie jogged to catch up to her, he noticed her left hand swinging lightly at her side. Once he was side by side with her, he nervously asked, "Should, should we hold hands?"

Sam's face jerked towards the boy's direction. The expression was blank, but Freddie seemed to see the hint of a blush on her cheeks. Perhaps it was just make-up. In an imperious tone, Sam stated, "You are not allowed to touch me unless I say so, dork."

Normally any boy would feel downhearted at being put down in such a manner, but for some reason Sam's words made him feel more at ease. This felt far more natural to the two of them. Grinning widely, he shot back, "That's a relief. I would probably cut up my hand holding your claw."

Sam's face melted into a smirk as she replied, "You wish you would be so lucky."

Thus, though the distance between the two hadn't changed since they left the apartment building, they felt exceedingly more comfortable with each step they took towards the dance. After a ticket taking teacher had checked their student IDs and accepted their tickets, they began to approach the wide open, double doors of the gym. The speakers were already blasting the song "Just the Girl" by The Click Five in poor fidelity as loudly as they possibly could, and a small spattering of students were on the floor dancing as best as they knew how.

Freddie noticed that Sam had fallen behind slightly. He knew she had just said something he couldn't quite hear over the music, so he walked back to her, pulling his head in close to hers as he loudly asked, "What did you say?"

Sam's eyes were looking away from his, and the blush that was gracing her cheeks was deeper than the one he had witnessed earlier. In a louder voice, she repeated, "So!"

Freddie didn't quite understand what she meant until she sighed exasperatedly and extended her left hand towards him. As he gingerly took her hand in his, the blush that was on Sam's face magically transferred to his own.

They were about to enter the gym hand in hand when Freddie moved his head in close to Sam's ear and laughingly teased, "You know, for a beast, you can be pretty corny." Sam's free right hand shot over like a bullet and gave him a good punch on his upper arm.

And so they entered the gym: Sam beaming happily as she dragged Freddie along, and Freddie clutching his right arm in pain.

* * *


	5. weDanced All Night

Chapter 5: weDanced All Night

* * *

The gym was only slightly recognizable to Freddie and Sam as they stepped inside of the double doors. The dance committee had set the ambience by dimming the lights to a low simmer. The speakers were receiving no such break, the music blasting through to allow the dancers a beat to dance to and to quicken the gradual deafening of the attendants. The bleachers had been pulled out to give the students a place to rest with every other row covered by white plastic the same consistency of a garbage bag, and a small stage had been set-up for a live performance by a local garage band.

The decorations were sparse: a handful of balloons were randomly tied to railings, some confetti had been sprinkled on the dance floor, and a hastily scribbled banner announcing both the theme and date of the dance dipped low a short distance from the main entrance into the gym. Clearly the students who had planned the dance recognized that the people who came to the event weren't there to look at their surroundings.

The moment she stepped inside of the gym, Sam's mind forced the reality of the situation onto the forefront of her thoughts. Through a series of events put into motion by Carly, Sam was going to a dance with Freddie. She was wearing clothing that she didn't feel comfortable in, and the shoes were about a half size too large for her feet. The unfamiliar feeling of cosmetics on her face felt like a new layer of facial skin. And her left hand was currently attached to Freddie's right.

Freddie figured that they had come to the dance to dance, so he began walking towards the dance floor. He was yanked backwards when Sam planted her feet in the ground and refused to move towards the confetti littered area. Turning his head towards her, he asked, "What's the matter, Sam?"

The moment their eyes made contact, she retracted her hand from his as though it had burned her. Noticing the look of confusion on his face, she replied, "I need a second. Can we sit down?" Even before Freddie nodded his acquiescence, she had turned around and begun moving towards a nearby set of bleachers. Grinning to himself, Freddie caught up to Sam and together they took a seat a couple of rows up towards the center of the stands.

Freddie's worried looks were not returned by Sam. Instead she seemed to find just about everything in the gym more interesting, her eyes darting everywhere except for the area surrounding the boy on her left. Freddie finally forced the issue, moving closer to the girl and repeating, "What's the matter, Sam?"

"Do you want the truth?" she countered, her eyes finally shifting in his direction.

"Of course," he answered immediately accompanied by an emphatic nod.

Her head turned towards him totally, the expression a serious one. "Why are we here?"

Freddie's right eyebrow raised suspiciously as his body reacted to what sounded like a trick question. Shrugging his shoulder, he reluctantly answered, "I think we're here to dance?"

"No, see, that's just the thing Captain Obvious," started Sam, her hands moving emphatically. Freddie watched the right hand suspiciously as it waggled since it had recently stung him. "You and I don't really dance."

"I don't know, I think I have some moves in me," said Freddie as he bobbed his head to the music rhythmically.

It was Sam's turn to raise her eyebrow. The head movement was in time with the music, but the force of the move looked like it could cause whiplash. Placing her hand on his shoulder to stop the movement and probably prevent permanent brain damage, she said, "Alright, let's pretend you can dance." She had to stop for a few moments to stem the laughter that was threatening to bubble forth from that thought. "Why are you and I here? Shouldn't you be chasing Carly right now?"

"She has a date," said Freddie with a shrug. "She always seems to have one to these things."

"You wouldn't have even asked me to go if she were available," she said matter-of-factly.

"Well, I guess," acknowledged Freddie. "You know what they say, when God closes a door, he opens a window."

"So I'm a window now," grumbled Sam as she leaned forward, placed her elbows on her knees, and stacked her head top of her clenched fists.

It took the grumbling for Freddie to finally realize that Sam was feeling like a consolation prize. Unsure how to proceed, he assured her, "You're not Carly, Sam."

She looked at him in disbelief as she spat out, "You're just full of tasty bits of wisdom today, aren't you Freddie?"

"No, I mean, you and Carly are two different people," he struggled. While she continued to stare at him blankly he forced his thoughts into a more coherent sentence. "I've never compared the two of you. It's like, Carly is Carly," he held out his right hand as though he were weighing something, "and Sam is Sam." He held out his left hand in a similar manner. "You two are in different categories. It's like comparing apples and oranges. I happen to like them both, you know." Her face seemed to lose the edge of hostility after that statement, so he continued, "You know, Carly asked me a tough question after I told her that you said no that first time."

"What question?" Sam asked as her curiosity piqued.

"Other than you two," he said slowly as he recalled what she asked word for word, "was there another girl in the school I would even consider asking to the dance."

"Of course not, we're the only two who will let you talk to us without puking on you or running away screaming," said Sam with a small smirk on her face.

"Well, I thought about it a while, and projectile vomit and utter rejection aside," he said, mirroring Sam's smirk, "you're one of my best friends, Sam." It was obvious to everyone including the two teenagers that this had been the case, but in relation to other interactions between the two of them, Freddie's statement was pretty high up there on the mushiness scale.

An uncomfortable silence arose between the two of them while they both looked away in embarrassment. Sam was the first to speak, "Well, even with that, it still doesn't explain why Carly had to dress me up like a Barbie doll." She pointed out a few girls who were on the dance floor in jeans and varying combinations of shirts. "I should have been able to come here like that," she whined.

"What's so bad about what you're wearing?" asked Freddie, making sure to keep his eyes off of Sam's clothing so that Sam wouldn't be tempted to slap him for perversion.

"Well for one thing, it restricts my movement," she began. "That punch on your arm wasn't as hard as I'm capable of."

His hand moved up to gently rub the upper part of his right arm, as he retorted, "My arm begs to differ."

"I can give you another one tomorrow so you can compare," offered Sam easily.

Freddie's eyes widened suddenly before he meekly retracted, "I'll take your word for it. You know as far as movement restrictions go, skirts should be easier to kick in."

"You'd better not give me a reason to test that theory," threatened Sam with a grin. After enjoying his squirm, she further explained, "I just don't know how to wear these things."

"Well you seem to be a natural at it to me," said Freddie.

"What do you mean?" she questioned, her eyebrows bunching together.

Freddie stumbled over his words for a moment under the strain of both the quick pace of the conversation and embarrassment over what he was planning to say. Finally, he managed to piece together, "I meant what I said back at Carly's earlier. You clean up nice, Sam."

"Are you making fun of me?" Sam questioned aggressively.

"No, no," claimed Freddie, scooting away from her slowly in case she decided to attack him. "I'm glad I got a chance to see you like this. I was as surprised as my Mom back at the apartment."

"My memory kind of blocked out that that segment of time thanks to an embarrassment overload," Sam admitted.

"I'm used to it, so I remember every word," stated Freddie steadily. "I agree with my mom, your kids are probably going to look cute. Until you get angry at them and start tossing them around."

"Now I know you're asking for a beating," growled Sam as her face turned a dark shade of crimson. She immediately lashed out at the boy with her left arm, but found that he had already begun scooting away.

"If you want to get me, you're going to have to come to the dance floor," teased Freddie as he began hopping down the bleacher rows. After he had stepped down the last one, he took a peek back at Sam. To his horror she vaulted down next to him, a masochistic look shining through her eyes. For the second time in the span of an hour, Freddie took off running and refused to look back.

Unluckily for Freddie, Sam had always been faster than he was, even in 1 ½" heels. Once she had relieved her stress by landing a few choice kicks on him, the teens stopped and took in their immediate surroundings. The Click Five was still trying to describe its bittersweet relationship. They were in a rather uninhabited portion of the dance floor a comfortable distance into the crowd of dancers. It was the perfect area to begin dancing.

It was there that Sam discovered that Freddie's earlier words had been strictly bravado. To his credit he seemed to have the basic moves down, but he managed to corrupt each of them with a overdose of dorkiness. The side to side sway was rigidly meticulous, making him seem like a well maintained arm of a grandfather clock. His head bobbing was an exact duplicate of what she had seen on the bleachers, and his arms seemed to be following the same insane movement patterns of his head.

Freddie was just starting to feel comfortable with his body movements when his rhythm was interrupted by a sharp pain on his shin. As he hopped about holding his aching shin with both of his hands, he snapped, "What was that for?"

"You're dancing funny," stated Sam bluntly. Her eyes narrowed as she commanded evenly, "Fix it."

Freddie's face blushed fiercely as he realized that he had been found out. Deciding that coming clean was the safest option, he stepped closer to Sam and quietly admitted, "I don't really know how to dance."

She began a slow clap before deadpanning, "And the award for understatement of the year goes to the biggest dork I've ever known." After drawing out his embarrassment to an appropriate length, she suspiciously stated, "I thought you said you went to one of these things with your cousin before."

"We kind of just sat through the entire thing," said Freddie truthfully. "It's weird dancing with your first cousin."

Instead of the triumphant smirk Freddie expected to see on Sam's face, he found her lips twisted into a rueful grin. "I figured it would turn out like this."

"I tried to learn by watching videos of guys dancing on the internet," confessed Freddie in an attempted act of supplication.

"Gayness of that statement aside, it's not horrible. I mean, you have the basic movements down," she conceded with a shrug. "If I gave you time you could probably figure out what you're doing wrong on your own."

Excited and emboldened by Sam's words, Freddie exclaimed, "Yeah, I bet I could!"

"Unfortunately, I don't have an extra year of my life to spare waiting for that to happen," said Sam with a sigh. She crossed her arms in front of her chest as she continued, "I guess I'm going to have to give you a crash course in dancing."

"A crash course in dancing?" asked Freddie, a suspicious tone sneaking into his voice. "To be honest, this seems too nice to be coming from you, Sam"

"It isn't," assured Sam with a wide smile on her face. "If you mess up a move enough times to frustrate me, I'm going to send you crashing to the ground."

"But you're too easily frustrated!" complained a flustered Freddie. "You smashed a jar of peanut butter on a counter the other day because it 'refused to open' after one try!"

"I hope you're a fast learner then," finished Sam, her smile taking on a demonic gleam. Freddie gulped down his fear bravely and prepared for his training.

They spent the remainder of their first dance together ironing out Freddie's dancing ability. After a handful of takedowns, one or two according to Sam, six or seven according to Freddie, they were closely mimicking each other in response to the music. They were able to continue this pattern for three songs, their bodies in easily recognizable synchronization by Carly who had been discreetly keeping an eye on her friends since they entered the gymnasium hand in hand.

* * *

The fourth song to come up was "My Love" by Justin Timberlake. It marked the first slow dance of the evening, an event punctuated by even more dimming of the gym lights. Sam and Freddie looked at each other helplessly as all around them couples collided together and began moving from side to side in a blob of teenage hormones. A handful of students had left the dance floor to sit on the bleachers to either recover their strength or lament their lack of a dancing partner. There were also a few pockets of resistance to the romantic mood of the song, these small groups of people continuing to dance in circles of mostly break dancers. Still, the majority of the floor had fallen into the comfortable swaying motion that is normally associated with middle school dances.

Freddie inched towards Sam, asking for permission to place his hands on her waist with hesitant eyes. He received neither acceptance nor rejection from the girl by the time his arms were close enough to reach out to her. Sam had simply stared at him, wondering how he was going to handle this situation. A slow dance was probably out of the evening's premise of only being together to have some fun. Sam decided she would allow him to decide how they were going to proceed for at least one time in the evening.

Sam's eyes moved away from his, a sign of submission that Freddie did not immediately recognize due to his surprise at its appearance. Both the situation and the side of Sam were unknown territories to the boy. He allowed his gaze to linger on her face as he searched inside of himself for what he should be doing. His mind was flashing dangerous images of Sam flipping him over her shoulder onto the cold, unforgiving gym floor, but he found that his mind was being vastly overpowered by something else. Her skin seemed so soft, and the contrast of a light pink blush on her cheeks was affecting him. Somehow it was drawing him forward so closely that he could swear that he felt heat emanating from her body. He watched in a kind of absent fascination as his hand moved towards the fabric of her dress, taking painful notice of the way the dress hugged her hip. There was a shape underneath the smooth fabric, not the ham-like shape he liked to tease her about. Something he wanted to feel underneath his hand. He guessed that it had to be at least as soft as he imagined her skin to be, and he desperately wanted to test his theory.

Before either of the two teens knew what was happening, Freddie's right arm had shakily moved towards Sam's hip and his left hand had gently taken hold of her right. As Sam's left hand rested on Freddie's shoulder she felt a tremor go through his body. Smiling lightly to the space above his right shoulder, she teased, "You're trembling like a leaf."

"Give me a break," Freddie pleaded, ignoring the tingling sensations his hands were sending throughout his body. "It's my first slow dance with someone other than my mom."

Sam's snicker was held back by a sobering thought. At first she thought to just let it wander in her mind, but as the music entered into its chorus and as Sam found herself lost in the imagery she became incapable of not asking, "Are you disappointed that it's with me?"

"Sam," started Freddie, the tremors pleasantly removed from his body but the intense awareness of their proximity remained. He moved his head in closer as his voiced dropped to a small whisper, "Even if I could, I wouldn't change a thing."

Sam turned her head away from Freddie for the rest of the song. She didn't want him to see the blush that had spread over her face as they fulfilled the purpose of the slow dance. The two teenagers spent the remainder of the song in complete silence; their minds soaking up the smooth lyrics of the song and their bodies intensely aware of each other.

* * *

They continued to dance together without incident for a couple more songs before Sam pulled him off of the dance floor. Tugged along by the front of his shirt, Freddie asked, "What's wrong, Sam? Tired?" The look of contempt she shot at him in response ruled out that possibility. Shrugging to himself, he allowed her to continue to pull him back to the bleachers. Arriving at their destination Sam neatly took a seat. Following her example and sitting to her left, Freddie again asked, "What's up this time?"

"I can't do it anymore," stated Sam plainly.

Freddie felt his stomach take a sudden plummet. Sucking up the feeling bravely, he questioned, "You got bored, huh?" When Sam turned a puzzled expression towards him, he grinned ruefully and continued, "Have your eye on the cute guy you're ditching me for already?"

As realization flooded over her, she flashed him a smirk and consoled, "Don't worry, I'm enjoying myself as much as I can under these conditions."

His confusion still enveloping his thoughts, he asked, "So then what can't you do anymore?"

"It's the clothes, the makeup," she began. Her attention suddenly shifted downwards. "And these damn shoes!" Sam exclaimed, kicking off the offending articles of clothing.

Freddie stared at the recently rejected shoes. The white leather shoes didn't have high heels, but as a fellow fan of flat shoes, he could see how those 1 ½" of heel elevation would bother her. His eyes moving back to Sam's face he said simply, "Go take them off, then."

Sam knew in her head that Freddie meant something more innocent than his words implied, but that didn't stop her cheeks from reddening and her right hand from punching him hard on the arm. Reflexes aside, she demanded, "What do you mean?"

"I'll call my Mom," explained Freddie defensively, gingerly rubbing his left arm where her fist had connected. "She'll bring us back to Carly's where you can change back into what you were wearing at school. We'll be back before Carly even knows we're gone."

"Really?" asked Sam as though she didn't believe what she was hearing. "I thought you liked what I'm wearing now."

Feeling his own face reddening, he asked, "What gave you that idea?" After Sam began to move as though she were going to answer, she seemed to physically recede as she decided that her words were too embarrassing to be vocalized. Freddie's eyebrow rose questioningly at her behavior. After it became apparent that she wanted to remain reticent on the subject, he nudged her with his knee and said, "Come on, you can't answer a simple question?"

Sighing resignedly, Sam's eyes looked across the gym as she finally answered, "It just seems like tonight's the first time you're looking at me like I'm a girl."

His face took on a new color of crimson as the most prominent thought on his mind was suddenly brought to light. Luckily for the boy, the embarrassment didn't seem to affect his speaking ability. He was his mother's son, after all. "It's true that you look really nice in that kind of stuff," he acknowledged, indicating her outfit with a wave of his hand. "We're here to have fun, though. If you're feeling uncomfortable, how are we going to do that?"

"You really wouldn't mind?" asked Sam quietly. Internally she was torn between the desire to be comfortable and this new, unrecognized feeling of femininity.

Freddie helped her go with her natural tendency by saying, "Yeah, I'd rather have you enjoying yourself than anything else." His hand reached into his pocket, shuffling around for his cell phone. "I'll just call my mom and she should be here soon."

The girl reached out and patted him on the arm. "No need, Freddie. I have a spare set of clothes in my hideout." As Freddie looked at her with surprise, she explained, "It's better to be prepared than to spend a day in stained clothes."

"Stained clothes?" asked Freddie, genuinely astounded by Sam's ability to prepare for something beforehand.

Sam was already standing up when she turned to him and stated, "You can't get away with half of the things I get away with at school if you're not ready to duck into a dirty, forgotten corridor." She added with a smirk, "Dirty, forgotten corridors can be pretty unforgiving on clothing."

Squinting up at the standing girl, he asked, "Should I go with you?"

"You'd only slow me down," chastised Sam. "I'll be back before you know it." As soon as she said that, she bent down to pick up the shoes and began sprinting towards the gym exit.

As soon as Sam's form disappeared from the gym, Freddie was hit by waves of loneliness and familiarity. This was something he was used to, being alone in a sea of normal, happy kids. He was unaccustomed to the feeling of emptiness, however.

His mind worried at the feeling, trying to rationalize its existence. There was really nothing new about his current situation. He had been sitting alone watching people go about their lives for as long as he could remember. Of course the scenery surrounding the picture varied, from malls to streets to parks, but the basic foundation was the same and right now it lay before him. So where was this feeling coming from?

Slowly, although he didn't want to admit it at first, he realized that it was probably due to having Sam at his side up until that point. You never really miss something until it's gone, or in this case until you ask it out to a dance and it leaves to go change into something more comfortable. To combat the feeling he put some active effort into sitting quietly on the sideline and watching the crowd. Maybe he could find Carly dancing the night away if he looked hard enough.

* * *

To Freddie's concerned surprise, he couldn't seem to find Carly or her date on the dance floor. He was on his fifth scan of the dancing students when Sam sauntered up to him and grabbed his attention by lightly kicking him in the shin. Grimacing in pain, Freddie looked up at Sam. The girl had decided to keep both the makeup and the hairstyle, but she had rejected everything else. There was no longer any silver jewelry adorning her body, her torso was covered by a dual layer of a horizontally black-striped, white, long-sleeved shirt and a blue t-shirt decorated with a silver splashing image at the right shoulder that spilled over the rest of the shirt, her legs were surrounded by an ordinary set of jeans, and her feet were nestled comfortably in a pair of white sneakers.

Freddie's silent inventory of Sam's clothing was interrupted as she yanked him up and attempted to drag him towards the dance floor. When she met resistance from the struggling boy, she turned towards him, crossed her arms in front of her chest, and asked flatly, "What's the matter? You don't approve of my outfit?"

"No, it's not that," said Freddie. "I've been sitting here watching the crowd since you left, and I can't seem to find Carly."

"That's kind of weird," said Sam, her own eyes searching the dance floor for her friend. Once she visually confirmed Freddie's claim, she commanded, "Let's go look for her." Freddie had no choice but to comply as she began pushing through the crowd of dancers. They made an interesting pair, Sam shoving people aside and Freddie following in her wake, quickly apologizing for her behavior.

It wasn't until Sam had pushed her way clean through the crowd that the two teenagers found Carly sitting on the opposite side of the gym, alone. The pair immediately surrounded the brunette girl, effectively awaking her from her daydream. Smiling genuinely, Carly asked, "What's up guys?"

"We were just about to ask you the same thing," said Freddie as he took a seat to the right of Carly.

"Yeah, where's your date?" asked Sam as she continued to look around. "Do I need to go beat him up?"

Carly grinned up at Sam. "It's alright, I just sent him to get me something to drink."

"Something to drink, eh?" said Sam to herself slowly. After digesting the words, she said, "I could use a drink."

"I bet," agreed Freddie. "You were a living incarnation of the Juggernaut out there." When his statement was met with blank stares, he explained, "You know, the comic book character? Anyway, I think you injured a couple of people."

"Spare me your dork speak," commanded Sam as she directed her palm towards his face, "and you know what? Go get me something to drink."

Freddie squinted up at Sam as he asked, "What's the magic phrase?"

Sam's eyebrow raised in Freddie's direction as she slowly cracked the knuckles of her right hand. When his gaze moved down to her fist, she lustily uttered, "Or else."

Carly shook her head as Freddie bolted towards the exit and Sam took over his seat to the right of her. Her head turning towards Sam, she commented, "Nice clothes."

Sam guiltily grinned at Carly. She had put a lot of effort into dressing her up, after all. "I couldn't take another step in those shoes, Carls."

"It's alright, I figured it was going to be a temporary thing anyway," shrugged Carly. "I just didn't realize how short that temporary was going to be."

"You should have," said Sam, nudging Carly in the ribs with her left elbow. "That's the first time I've been in heels since my mom stopped dressing me."

Carly's gaze connected with Sam's as she asked, "So how did your date take your change of wardrobe?"

"Freddie didn't seem to mind at all, actually," admitted Sam with a light shrug. "He even offered to call his mom to pick us up and let me get my clothes from your house."

"Sounds like you two are getting along," said Carly wistfully. "I wish my date was going half as well."

Sam's right eyebrow again raised high above her eye. "Oh, so I do need to beat him up?"

"It's not really something he can control," assured Carly with a sigh. "He just doesn't want to dance."

"Then why is he here?" questioned Sam, her face mirroring the disbelief in her voice.

"To talk I guess?" answered Carly shakily, palms held upwards.

"Well think of it this way," said Sam, eager to cheer up her best friend. "At least you're not out there with the dancing dork."

Carly looked at her friend quizzically. "I've seen you guys on the dance floor. Freddie dances alright."

"That's after I taught him through a strict regiment of corporal punishment," said Sam, making a phantom hip throw to illustrate her point. "You should have seen him before."

"Oh so that's what that was during that first dance," realized Carly out loud with a smile on her face. "I thought you were trying out some extreme dancing moves. It must be nice having such an apt pupil."

"Ha, ha, ha," said Sam flatly, the right side of her face wrinkling sarcastically. "It's physically demanding teaching Freddie how to dance. He's not a natural dancer. He's a dork. You have to be ready to toss him at any moment." She accompanied her complaint with a sad shaking of her head.

Carly leaned towards Sam suddenly, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as she asked, "Wanna switch dates, then?"

Sam's body twitched backwards in response to Carly's movement, then moved backwards even further at the content of her question. She scanned the eyes of her best friend to determine if this was a joke, but found no laughter contained within them. Confused, she could only manage to defensively ask, "What?"

Sam was saved from further questioning by the arrival of Carly's date, who was holding two cans of soda. Carly introduced him as one of her classmates in Biology. Sam didn't pay any attention as she said his name and retold how he had asked her to the dance. She wouldn't argue the fact that he was cute, but from what she had gathered beforehand this was going to be the last time she saw this guy outside of school. Instead of listening to Carly's words she anxiously scanned the floor for Freddie.

* * *

Freddie came to two realizations as he fished inside of his pockets for drink money. One, he had just submitted to one of Sam's commands without a fight, or at least an attempt at resistance. Normally even if Sam was threatening him with bodily harm, as she had just done, he would put up a front of resistance. Especially if he was being commanded to do something in front of Carly. Second, he had no idea what kind of drink she wanted. Recent experience told him that she had a preference for iced tea over apple juice, but he also knew that Sam was a big fan of sugar and caffeine which pointed towards soda as the obvious choice.

To his mounting, conscious horror he found he was more concerned with the latter thought. There was only one plausible explanation for what was happening. Sam was a witch and she had cast a Charm spell on him to make him fall in …

Freddie quickly wiped that thought from his memory and focused on the task at hand. Apple juice it was. Wait, iced tea. Or possibly soda.

* * *

Aware that she was being ignored, Carly turned most of her attention back to her date. They continued with the same type of conversation they had been engaged in since they had begun walking towards the gym. It consisted of superficial, probing questions that always occurred at the onset of a relationship. Carly had expected to deal with a few of them between dances, not spend the entire evening chatting on the sidelines.

She watched with envy as Sam rushed off to Freddie, whose arms were loaded with various drinks. She realized with a smile that Freddie didn't know what kind of drink Sam had wanted, and had therefore brought back one of as many as he physically could. Freddie was able to offer her a couple of different varieties of drinks before she grabbed his hand and yanked him towards the dance floor, spilling all of the drinks onto the floor. As Sam dragged him into the crowd of students, Freddie looked at the abandoned pile of drinks pitifully.

Unable to keep the grin off of her face, Carly decided that she would be having a much better time with her friends than with her non-dancing date. She immediately thought up a plan, and proceeded to set it into motion. Her date watched in surprise as she ripped the tab off of her soda in her haste to open the can and began to chug it down.

* * *

It wasn't clear to either Sam or Freddie why she had decided to haul him back onto the dance floor, but the thought was soon forgotten as they became caught up in the live garage band's cover of "Cupid's Chokehold" by the Gym Class Heroes. Sam silently admitted to herself that Freddie was getting better at dancing as they went along. If he kept it up, he might get through this dance without getting tossed on the floor.

Just as the lead singer was in the middle of explaining how he knew he was in love, Carly appeared next to the pair. To Sam's disappointment Freddie stopped dancing immediately and asked, "Carly, what are you doing here?"

"I'm ditching my date," said Carly simply. "I sent him after another drink and disappeared into the dancers."

"That still doesn't really explain why you're here," said Sam, an unmistakably annoyed tone blanketing her voice.

Carly peered over at her best friend and was surprised to see her weight shifted on the balls of her feet and her arms crossed tightly across her chest. Even her eyes were broadcasting waves of disappointment and disapproval in her direction. Grinning to herself, she quickly apologized, "I'm just passing through, Freddie. I didn't mean to make Sam jealous."

The brunette girl faded back into the crowd of dancers, again pleasantly surprised by how well the relationship between her two friends was developing. She had been planning to spend the rest of the night dancing with the two of them, but the look in Sam's eyes had ruled out that option and Freddie hadn't protested as she quietly left. Perhaps Spencer was wrong and an epiphany was looming in the near future. She kept the grin on her face as she began to scan the dance floor for a suitable dancing partner.

After Carly disappeared into the crowd, Freddie turned towards Sam with genuine confusion blanketing his face. "What did she mean by jealous?"

As her face began to take a tint of pink Sam's mouth pursed angrily, a clear sign that Freddie should cease his line of questioning. Just in case he wasn't capable of reading her expression, she coldly commanded, "Just start dancing before I throw you on the ground again."

Smiling to himself, he kept his mouth shut and began to dance while the garage band immortalized the traits of the Gym Class Heroes' ideal woman. He felt his cheeks flush as the lyrics began to describe the girl across from him. She did indeed have "a smile that would make the most senile annoying old man bite his tongue". Easily visible to him were "the eyes comparable to sunrise" and "the porcelain skin". He forced his imagination to stop at the description of her laugh. In his humble opinion, these were rather dangerous thoughts for him to be harboring towards Sam.

Sam also found herself deeply troubled. The image that had begun haunting her mind days earlier had come true. The music was blasting furiously, Freddie was dressed up pleasingly, and his face was displaying the smile that he always seemed to reserve only for Carly. The reason she was troubled was not because it scared her like it had back then. It was because it no longer scared her. In her humble opinion, these were stupid thoughts for her to be harboring towards a dork.

* * *

A slow song ended and would soon be followed by a fast one, an event signified by a gradual brightening of the lights. Sam and Freddie awkwardly stepped away from each other and prepared to dance again. They had been at it all night, with only a couple of pauses for Freddie to catch his breath after a long string of fast songs. Before the speakers began pumping out music, a normal, teenage, female voice announced, "This next song will be the last song of the evening. We hope you guys enjoyed the dance as much as we did! Thanks for the memories!" Her words were immediately chased by a flurry of low, fast notes from an orchestra; the opening to Fallout Boy's "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs".

The announcement came as a shock to both Freddie and Sam. Time had flown by for the both of them. They missed the first fifteen seconds of the song standing in place and mirroring looks of surprise at each other. They recovered quickly afterwards and began moving to the music as they had become accustomed to after a night full of dancing together. There was an unknowingly shared resolve between the two of them to enjoy this dance as much as they could.

To be honest, their enjoyment was not derived from more energetic dancing or special moves they had held in reserve. Each of the teen's energy reserves was low from a night spent mostly on their feet, and Sam had banned Freddie from attempting special moves after five minutes on the dance floor. If anything they danced more slowly, but more cohesively than they had beforehand. Unconsciously they had been committing each other's moves to memory, and the act made it easier for them to synchronize their movements. Limbs were flailed as though they were arranged in tandem, forward and backward momentum was precisely matched, and their eyes rarely left the comfortable zone of the other's gaze.

The song ended satisfactorily, with both of the teenagers breathing heavily. Freddie found that Sam was making a point of avoiding eye contact with him as they followed the exiting crowd outside of the school. His eyes furtively shifted towards Sam's side, where the hand which he had held minutes before resumed its rightful place in the world: outside of his reach.

Once outside, they were able to meet up with Carly through a vigorous game of cell phone tag. Reunited, the three teenagers took a seat under a nearby tree as they waited for Spencer to pick them up.

"So how did the rest of the night go after I left you guys?" asked Carly lightly as her hands picked at the grass in front of her.

"Ok, I guess," answered Freddie cautiously, his eyes scanning Sam's face for a reaction. Seeing that she wasn't going to disagree or throw a punch at him, he continued, "She stopped tossing me a little while after you left."

Sam wanted to compliment him on his dancing improvement, but found that her tongue wouldn't allow her to. After struggling with herself for a moment, she was forced to settle for a smug, "My arms got tired."

"There's no way your arms got tired," said Freddie confidently. "You have the endurance of a donkey."

"Better the endurance than the face," countered Sam quickly. "Unfortunately you weren't quite so lucky."

Carly sighed heavily as her friends continued to bicker. It looked like they hadn't really made any progress at all.

When Spencer finally pulled up to the curb, Sam was chasing Freddie around the tree and Carly was rolling on the ground laughing at whatever Freddie had said to make Sam pursue him.

* * *

The group piled out of the elevator and into Carly's living room. The ride back had been filled with conversational interaction between Sam and Freddie. The conversation consisted of mostly arguments, but Carly considered the interaction infinitely better than the silence that had permeated the car on the way to the school.

Spencer swaggered towards the stairs, sleepily explaining, "Well, its Spencer's bedtime now. He has to stuff to do tomorrow morning." He took a peek at his watch and appeared to be visibly distressed by what he saw. "Actually, I mean in a few hours. Good night children!"

"I should go slip into my sleeping clothes," said Carly as she quickly followed her brother away from the living room. Just as she was about to disappear up the stairs she ducked her head down and called out, "See you tomorrow, Freddie!"

A silence filled the room as the two teenagers realized that they were alone. After a long time spent looking around the room, Freddie finally asked, "So I guess you're sleeping over Carly's tonight, huh?"

"You guessed right," confirmed Sam quickly.

His face perked up suddenly as a thought occurred to him. "Want to shoot an episode of "Wake Up Spencer" later?"

Glad that the conversation was moving towards a more normal topic, Sam nodded enthusiastically. "Definitely," she answered. After glancing at a nearby clock she stated, "Meet me back here in four hours."

"Will do," assured Freddie as he began moving towards the front door. As his hand was just about to open the door, he thought he heard Sam mumble something behind him. Turning around, he asked, "Did you say something Sam?"

Sam's face immediately took on a deep shade of red. She had just thanked him for asking her to the dance under her breath, but there was no way she could actually say something embarrassing like that to his face. She decided denial was the best course of action, so she answered, "I didn't say anything."

Freddie let out a surprised, "Oh, I see." Shrugging he turned around to unlock the door. After he opened it and stepped outside, he turned towards Sam and said, "Thanks for going to the dance with a dork like me, Sam. I really had fun."

Caught off guard, Sam's face maintained its brightened color. In her current state she could only manage an acknowledging nod and the slight praise of, "Your dancing wasn't so bad towards the end."

Freddie directed the now familiar smile in her direction. "I had a decent teacher," he stated. "Well, see you soon," he called out as he spun around and headed across the hall towards his apartment.

As Sam moved to close the door, Freddie popped his head back in and asked, "Hey, Sam, do you think you'd want to go with me to another dance some other time?"

Intensely feeling the blood rushing to her face, the girl managed to cautiously answer, "I'll think about it."

Freddie nodded his acceptance of her words. It wasn't a flat out refusal, after all. Feeling happy, he all but skipped across the hallway and entered his apartment. He should have known something was up when he found that the front door wasn't locked.

As he bent down to remove his shoes, a shadow that had melted into the coat closet stepped into the light and transformed into a tall, corporeal figure. It moved with practiced, lightning precision, pouncing on the boy before he had the chance to remove his unlaced right shoe.

Freddie didn't even have time to scream as his mother pinned him up against the doorway and began barking questions at him.

Across the hallway, Sam ignored the loud thud and screeching soprano voice that seemed to be coming from Freddie's apartment as she closed and locked the front door. Slightly upset with herself for not being able to speak her mind, she found herself unexpectedly tired. There really wasn't anything she could do about it at the moment, so she set her cell phone alarm clock for three o'clock and settled down on the living room couch.

* * *

Carly came back downstairs ready to watch some television with Sam before heading to bed. She had removed her make-up and dressed up in a pajama set covered with a pleasant combination of sheep and clouds. To her surprise, she found Sam snoring softly on the couch. There was an innocent smile on her dreaming face as she lay on her right side with her right arm acting as a pillow and her left arm tucked into her stomach. Smiling to herself Carly went into a nearby closet and removed a blanket.

As the girl pulled the blanket over Sam she noticed that her friend had something tucked into the crook of her left arm. On closer inspection she discovered that the object was a pencil. Carly had to fight hard to stop herself from exclaiming over how cute her friend was acting. After an extreme effort she managed to quell the urge, gently tuck Sam in, and move back up the stairs. It looked like Carly could sleep soundly tonight. Her worries had been laid to rest.

From here on, it was really only a matter of time.


	6. Wake Up Spencer the lost, evil episode

Bonus Chapter: "Wake Up Spencer!" the lost, evil episode.

* * *

Sam's sleep was rudely interrupted by the vibrating alarm of her cell phone. Slowly, her eyes opened and took in her surroundings. After recognizing that she had been sleeping on the Shea's living room couch, Sam noticed that the lights were out both inside and outside of the apartment, and that she seemed to have picked up a blanket since the last time she closed her eyes. As she sat up, she took a peek at her cell phone and confirmed what her body was screaming at her: it was three o'clock in the morning. She should be asleep for another four hours; eight if you added the average time she spent sleeping during class. What was she awake for again?

Three sharp knocks on the Shea's front door reminded her that she had agreed to film another segment of "Wake Up Spencer" with Freddie. Still partially under the drowsy spell of deep slumber, she stumbled towards the door and cautiously ran her hand over her face to check for drool and crusties. Her face passing inspection, she unlocked the door and threw it open. In the dim hallway lights, Sam found Freddie waiting expectantly in dorkish pajamas.

The pajamas in question were a matching set of top and bottoms decorated with a random interlacing of racing car tracks. After taking in the whole ensemble, she pleaded through compressed laughter, "Please tell me you were too tired from the dance to look at what you put on for bed."

Freddie shrugged his shoulders. "My mom ruined what I was wearing to the dance while she was putting my very own, private version of the Spanish Inquisition." He tossed an appraising gaze down at his clothing, taking note of the car tracks. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing anyway? I thought race cars were manly."

"The cars themselves sure, but not their tracks," said Sam matter-of-factly as she flicked her bangs out of her eyes with her hand. "Especially when guessing from the pattern of those tracks there's a fifty car pile up around your butt."

Jaw set in a determined manner, Freddie put Sam's clothing through a similar appraisal using the hallway lights. As his eyes rose to her face, a wry grin grew on his own. "I see you just went straight to bed. You sure that was a wise decision?"

"You didn't seem to have a problem with what I was wearing a few hours ago," said Sam, her arms crossing in front of her chest aggressively.

"The clothes are fine," admitted Freddie easily. "I think you lost some makeup on whatever pillow you were sleeping on, though." He curled up defensively, prepared for physical retaliation. When none came he took a peek at the girl's face and found unexpected signs of distress. Quickly forcing his gaze away from her hurt expression, he said, "I'll go get the camera ready."

As he bounded up the stairs two at a time, a sobering thought evolved in his mind. It began as puzzlement over Sam acting like a girl. After chewing that thought over for a few moments, he began to wonder if she had acted like a girl frequently in the past but he just hadn't noticed it before. Its final evolution was puzzlement over what had changed in him that allowed him to recognize the feminine side of the natural wedgie dispensing machine.

Sam waited until Freddie was comfortably up the stairway before rushing to the kitchen, smacking the light switch, huddling over the sink, and deluging her face in warm water. It took three rough scrubs before she thought she could feel her face with her fingers. After scrubbing one more time for good measure she glanced down at the sink, glaring at flecks of makeup that stubbornly clung to the metal basin. That was a rather tenacious organic product. Maybe she hadn't removed all of it.

As a camera equipped Freddie hopped down the last set of stairs he found Sam standing in the kitchen, staring intently at a spoon. Misinterpreting the scene, he asked with mirth coloring his words, "Getting ready to raid the fridge?"

Sam looked up from her miniature reflection in stiffened shock at being caught before she understood his question. That really wasn't a bad idea. Her expression became pensive as she wondered whether or not she was hungry, and then shifted to incredulous as she remembered that there was always room for pudding. In a fluid movement forged from countless repetition, she moved to the Shea's refrigerator, opened it up, and quickly retrieved two containers of pudding. With an equally practiced flick of her wrist, she sent one of the pudding cups flying towards Freddie's face.

A rush of adrenaline moved Freddie's hand up to cover his face and a burst of luck allowed him to catch it as it landed in the palm of his defending hand. In the flicker of a second he decided to play it off as though he meant to catch the pudding, sending a smirk at Sam before tearing off the aluminum top with his teeth and beginning to lap up the sugar loaded treat with his tongue.

Sam watched the scene with a bemused smile on her face. "How barbaric," she commented.

Freddie stopped halfway through his pudding cup, eyeing the girl incredulously as he asked, "How am I the barbaric one? You just threw something at my face."

Sam stepped within arm's reach of the boy, explaining, "You have pudding on your face." Her tilted head, still bearing a bemused smile, continued to stare at a spot on his cheek until her right pointer finger shot towards the spot in question and wiped the pudding off of his cheek.

Time moved in slow motion for Freddie as her finger moved towards her body. Not towards her mouth. Yes, towards her mouth. Blood rushed to the boy's cheeks emanating from the point where she had touched him. It ascended past her chin. Then it moved past her mouth, up towards her nose? Wait, it was coming back down quickly, past her chin. Then it went back up again. Time returned to its normal flow as he realized that she was just whipping it up and down to fling the pudding into the air.

After removing the pudding from her finger, Sam shifted her pudding cup to her right hand and opened the top with her left. As she began scooping the confection into her mouth, she said, "Next time, be civilized like me and scoop it up using your hands, eh?"

Freddie noticed with chagrin that she was using her left pointer finger to scoop up the pudding. "I thought you had a spoon," he said with a hint of confusion.

Sam indicated the spoon that she had left behind on the counter by raising an eyebrow in its direction. Looking back towards Freddie she asked innocently, "What does that have to do with anything?"

"You said be civil …" he realized with a sigh that trying to discuss civility with a wild animal was a hopeless task. Shaking his head, he put the camera down on the counter and followed Sam's lead, finishing off his pudding with his finger.

Pudding safely in their stomachs and cups placed neatly in the trash can, Sam commanded, "Let's go shoot the segment."

Shrugging in the complacent manner that surface after one has eaten dessert; Freddy grabbed the camera off of the counter and followed Sam towards Spencer's bedroom. "Should we try to get him to talk about pudding?" he suggested, his thoughts still hauntingly sweetened by the snack.

"Maybe we can get him to talk about dances," said Sam. She realized a second after she made the suggestion that she had just revealed what had been weighing on her mind. Her eyes snuck towards Freddie's face, and the blush she found there showed that he had also made the connection.

Freddie saved her from further embarrassment by turning on the camera early, stepping next to her and pointing the camera in their direction. In a hushed voice he said, "Welcome to the next segment of 'Wake Up Spencer'!"

Not missing a beat, Sam beamed into the camera, glad that it would be difficult to see her blush in the darkness of the hallway outside of Spencer's bedroom. "It's about 3:30 in the morning and we're about to wake up Carly's brother Spencer and ask him a bunch of random questions."

Freddie turned the camera towards the door, ready to open it and take a shot of Spencer's old-fashioned alarm clock. The door prevented him from acting on his plan. He felt Sam bump into his back, and prepared for the verbal backlash.

It came as soon as Sam recovered her balance in the form of, "What's the big idea, Freddie?"

"It's locked," whispered Freddie in amazement.

"You're kidding. He never locks the door," stated Sam. "Move aside, you're probably just too weak to open it." After a quick shuffle in the dark and a failed attempt to open the locked door, Sam's voice repeated Freddie's statement of, "It's locked."

"But he never locks the door," accused Freddie.

Sam shifted her weight as she pondered the situation. As a thought struck her, she asked, "Do you think he has a girl in there?" The two teenagers paused to piece together the situation.

"I don't think he has a girlfriend right now, and he said he had to be up early today," pondered Freddie out loud.

"We should listen at the door!" concluded Sam suddenly, shifting her weight towards the wooden barrier. Her path was obstructed by Freddie, who grabbed her arm and tugged her away. Frowning at her obstructer, she demanded, "What's your problem? This will be the easiest way to find out what's going on."

"We should respect his privacy. A locked door means we can't go in," hissed Freddie as he struggled against Sam's superior physical strength.

The girl raised an eyebrow in his direction as she stated, "I can pick the lock. It's not a problem."

Freddie sighed before answering, "That's not the problem." She had stopped trying to move toward the door, allowing him to remove his hand from her arm. Hands free, he looked down to turn off the camera. "We'll just shoot it some other time," he said with a small shrug of his shoulders as he fumbled for the shrouded off switch in the darkness of the hallway. When he looked up again, Sam was using her lockpicks to open Spencer's door.

After another round of "Pull Sam Away From the Door", Sam turned away from the door and towards him. Finally given a brief respite, he again relinquished his hold on her arm and began to mop the sweat off of his brow.

A fresh sheen of sweat emerged on his recently dried forehead as Sam stepped menacingly towards him and demanded through clenched teeth, "So you're telling me that I woke up at 3:00 in the morning for nothing?"

Desperate for an escape route, he came up with, "Er, maybe we could watch some television?"

"What's on TV this late at night?" asked Sam, a girl used to getting eight hours of sleep at night.

Freddie, a boy used to staying up all night on the computer with no television in sight shrugged, "Might as well find out."

"You're making me a sandwich," commanded Sam as the two teenagers retreated to the living room couch. Freddie veered off to the kitchen and did as he was told even though he mentally complained that it wasn't his fault Spencer locked his bedroom door for once.

After a few minutes, Sam and Freddie were seated comfortably on the couch, munching on their sandwiches (Freddie made it halfway through his before Sam confiscated it and finished it off herself), and flipping through the channels. There was absolutely nothing good on television, but the late night infomercials provided suitable cannon fodder for the witty teenagers.

They spent a long time tearing up the infomercials, until the weariness of dancing all night and lack of sleep caught up to them both. Sam was the first to fall, her eyes closing heavily and her breathing deepening into an even rhythm. Freddie, who had been pleasantly surprised to find out that MTV actually showed music videos in the wee hours of the morning, didn't notice that Sam had fallen asleep until he felt her head land on his right shoulder.

Stricken by a sharp feeling of déjà vu, he relaxed his shoulder and stared thoughtfully at the top of her blonde head. A week ago he would have immediately swatted her head off of his shoulder, but that morning he found himself thinking about how light her head felt and involuntarily taking in the sweet scent of her shampoo. He allowed his mind to focus on those thoughts so that it wouldn't have time to ponder the heavy question of why his feelings towards this beast turned girl on his shoulder were changing.

Eventually that mental exertion compounded with his physical condition, forcing him into his own private dreamland.

* * *

Carly awoke to a thumping sound on her bedroom wall, a signal that Spencer needed her assistance. A peek at her bedside clock told her that it was a little past six in the morning. Groaning out her complaint, she gathered all of her willpower to pick herself up out of bed. Once that was accomplished she somehow managed to drag herself to his door, give it a couple of raps with the back of her knuckles, and call out sleepily, "What's the matter, Spencer?"

"My door is stuck!" called out Spencer.

"What do you mean stuck?" she asked as she attempted to rub the sleep out of her eyes.

"I locked it last night because I heard Freddie and Sam say they were going to film another evil 'Wake Up Spencer' clip, and now it won't open!" her brother shouted through the wooden portal. "I think the lock is stuck because I never use it!"

As Carly's hand moved to try the door for herself, she noticed a familiar set of lockpicks sticking from the door handle. "Spencer, I'm going to try something," she called out as she removed the long thin metal files from the handle. "Try opening the door now." The door opened slowly, but instead of the grateful facial expression she expected to see, Spencer's face was twisted by a mixture of awe and fear. "What?"

Backing away slowly, he accused, "You're a witch now?"

Sighing, Carly ignored her retreating brother and headed towards the kitchen to prepare some breakfast. She took a quick peek at the couch to check on Sam. The quick peek turned into a petrified stare when she found her sleeping best friends propped against each other on the couch.

Spencer emerged from his bedroom only after convincing himself that Carly couldn't be a witch. She was too pretty and she didn't have a big wart on her face. He was busy wondering whether Lewbert's mole granted him any magical powers when he found his sister standing over the living room couch with a stunned expression on her face. Rushing to her side, he was treated to the sight of his midnight tormenters sleeping helplessly before him. A malicious grin formed on his face as he commented, "Oh, that's perfect."

"Really? I think they're moving kind of fast, personally," said Carly with a happier grin on her face.

"No, I mean grab that camera, Carly," commanded Spencer as he calmly walked towards the kitchen. "Its payback time," he muttered to no one in particular.

Carly did as her brother told her to, picking the camera up off of the coffee table and following her brother to the kitchen."What are you planning, Spencer?"

"It's time for a segment of 'Wake Up Sam-Freddie'," stated Spencer as he soaked a few paper towels in water. He looked up at his sister suddenly, a sour expression on his mouth. "Sam-Freddie doesn't sound that great. Freddie-Sam maybe? Fram? Saddie? Oh, that last one sounds like a term for softcore emo. 'That kid's not emo. He's a saddy.'"

"Whatever you want, Spencer," placated Carly quickly, eager to see what Spencer had planned. As she flipped on the camera and pointed it at her brother, she warned, "I'm turning on the camera now."

Viewed through the vividly colored screen of the camera, Spencer threw on the cheesy grin he always wore when he knew he was being filmed. He spent a couple of moments staring blankly into the camera before shouting (or, as he liked to call it, enthusiastically talking), "Hello and welcome to the first ever 'Wake Up The Two People Who Won't Let Me Sleep When One Of Them Sleeps Over Even Though I Warned Them That …" Carly interrupted her brother's long-winded rant with a forced cough. His train of thought lost, he took a moment to gasp back the air that he had just violently expelled from his lungs. Once that was accomplished, he threw a theatrical wink towards the camera and finished, "Today we're going to throw wet paper towels at their faces!"

Carly sent her brother a pained expression, hoping there was more to this plan. It was clear from the vacant look on Spencer's face that there was not. She contemplated stopping him or augmenting his plan, but decided that Spencer was owed at least one shot at the two of them for all of their late night sleep interruptions. Besides, the expressions on their faces when they realized that they'd been caught in such a controversial position should be worthy of recording in and of itself.

Spencer crept towards the pair of sleeping teenagers as he had learned to do from years of watching creeping greats like Jason and Elmer Fudd. Carly held back a giggle as her brother exaggeratedly tiptoed forward with his body lurching forward at an acute angle that would be impossible to maintain for long. As he came within striking range, he realized that maybe he would have the opportunity to lead them in an awkward conversation like they frequently did to him. He would tell them the sculptures had come to life and were dancing. That should be a good time. The thought put a smile on his face as he threw the first volley of wet paper towels at their faces.

Although he hadn't quite thought through his plan, the young adult had been mentally prepared for a few reactions to his soggy ambush. Among these reactions were the aforementioned half-awareness, petrifying shame, and absent-minded, horrified fleeing. He did not take into account Sam's pure hatred of being woken up. Spencer was therefore unprepared for what happened next.

It happened as though she were already awake before the attack, which she just happened to have been at the time. It had been difficult to sleep through Spencer's loud introduction, but it had been even harder to think of an excuse for her current position. Luckily, Spencer provided her with a proper way out of her predicament: retaliation.

Just as the first volley was about to land on Sam's face, her right hand shot up and caught the wet projectile. The sudden movement of Sam and the utter lack of a splash immediately followed with spluttering that seemed to have afflicted Freddie caught the Shea siblings by surprise. They reacted in different ways, Carly with a gasp and Spencer with a high pitched squeal. The squeal was soon squelched when Sam shot the soggy towel straight back at Spencer. A squishy thud provided aural confirmation that Spencer had been hit dead on. In the words of FPS Doug: boom, headshot.

Stumbling backwards, Spencer attempted to throw another towel as cover fire. It floated lazily in the air where Sam snatched it and fired it back with interest. It became clear to Carly that her clumsy brother was overmatched by the natural reflexes and marksmanship of her best friend. It was time to put down the camera.

Sam was just getting used to the game of catch and pelt Spencer when she felt a wet thud on her left cheek. Turning her head she found Carly grinning mischievously at her, right hand guiltily outstretched and a stack of wet paper towels waiting in her left hand. Realizing that she was currently flanked, Sam hopped back towards the couch for cover.

The world was a confusing place for Freddie most days, and this one turned out to be no exception to the rule. It had taken him a few minutes, but he now realized that the reason he was having trouble breathing was that his face was covered with something wet and white. Just as he was about to fix the situation himself, a hand reached over and grabbed it from his face, saving him from his sputtering fate. His savior turned out to be Sam, so he turned a grateful smile at her, prepared to thank her.

Sam didn't give him the chance to put his thought into action, as she hauled him up and pushed him in front of her. When she had been hiding behind the couch she noticed that the normally useless (and currently drowning) Freddie could provide two very useful things for this water fight: ammunition and cover. Using the hapless dork as a tower shield, she moved around the room pelting both of her opponents with paper towels that she peeled off of the pitifully squealing boy.

* * *

Freddie wasn't saved from the constant hail of wet paper towels until his clothing appeared as though he had gone for a fully-clothed swim. As usual, his salvation came in the form of his mother, who barged into the apartment after recognizing her son's squeals of distress through at least three walls. Even after almost breaking down the front door, no one noticed Mrs. Benson standing there until she shouted at the top of her lungs, "Everybody stop!" Sam swore for weeks afterwards that a paper towel she had just launched at Carly stopped in midair and dropped like a rock at the sheer volume of Mrs. Benson's command.

The three teenagers and Spencer immediately froze; rooted in place by the feeling that they had been caught doing something wrong by a higher authority. Taking advantage of the situation, Mrs. Benson snatched her son by the back of his pajama top and began dragging him towards their apartment. Having been accustomed to being moved against his will by this point, Freddie had the presence of mind to smile weakly at his friends and wave goodbye.

The Sheas and Sam didn't regain control over their bodies until the front door closed and they could faintly hear Freddie's mother lecturing her son on the dangers of water fights. The fighting trance had been broken, so the combatants all put down their ammunition slowly and surveyed their handiwork. The living room was littered with paper towels, and there appeared to be more wet areas than dry ones.

Sam shrugged and began moving towards the kitchen, her rumbling stomach reminding her that she hadn't yet eaten breakfast. As Carly moved to follow her friend, Spencer called out, "Wait. No one's going to help me clean up?"

Carly sent her brother a sassy smile before answering, "Your plan, your mess."

The argument was airtight, so Spencer sucked it up and began peeling the drying paper towels off of the couch. As his fingers began to prune, he mentally confirmed that the "Wake Up" segments really were evil.

* * *

Old Author's Notes: Thank you for reading my story. I know compared to many other fan fics, this was a significant time investment. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I have to give a big thanks to Nickelodeon and Dan Schneider for providing me with such wonderful characters to play with, and Jennette McCurdy and Nathan Kress for sparking my imagination with their rare chemistry.

Just in case anyone was still wondering, the reference I put in two chapters ago was to Jennette's role in CSI: Crime Scene Investigations. Many reviewers have correctly guessed the fan video reference, the "Just the Girl" video by tvFANatic26. There was also a reference three chapters ago to Miranda's past role in Drake and Josh.

I know there are going to be a few readers who are disappointed that I couldn't end the story with a more significant relationship level between Freddie and Sam. Unfortunately I felt that anything more than this would be pushing them out of character. One reason this chapter took so long coming out was that I had to scrap a significant amount of writing after re-reading it and deeming it too mushy to be viable. Honestly, however, I have to agree with Carly's final assessment at the end of the story. After two people who like each other realize their feelings, provided neither are emotionally scarred or tremendously anti-social it is only a matter of time before they do get together. I feel that through the course of the story Sam and Freddie have gotten through one of the biggest barriers to a relationship between two friends.

I'm going to take a couple more seconds to ask you to review my story honestly as a whole. I want to get a handle on what about this fan fic kept you reading until this point. Was it your loyalty towards Seddie? The plotline of the story? The romance? The comedy? The writing style? Also please don't be afraid to write what you didn't like about the story. I'm a writer who is both secure in his writing abilities and eager to improve, and I need honest feedback in order to do so. Please be as complete as possible.

* * *

Edited Author's Notes: I just hit 50 reviews the other night! I would like to extend my deepest thanks to everyone who has reviewed this story. I'll be doing my best to get back to those of you who have left me feedback now that the story is done.

Well, this is a little late, but better late than never! I think I can leave this story alone now. On my last read through it, it felt polished enough to me. As an apology to those who have been waiting for this freshly edited version, I've added a bonus chapter. It doesn't really have a place in the story as a whole. It just provided me with an opportunity to throw in a little bit of Seddie fluff and I figured most of the readers would appreciate something like that.

Most of the changes I've done to the story have been cosmetic in nature, trying to make the text less wordy and more concise without losing effectiveness. I also made the story more humorous to someone with my sense of humor, which hopefully matches up with a few readers. There have been some content additions, mostly in regards to Freddie's feelings. As a guy, I tend to underwrite the thoughts of my male characters in the earlier drafts because I view them as too obvious and simple to warrant attention. I recognize that this isn't the proper way to go about it, though, and so I take steps to fix this in later drafts. I hope I've done the poor boy justice this time around.

Once more, thank you for reading my story. I enjoyed myself, and I hope you have also.

Sincerely,

Falling Further


End file.
